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PAUL    VERLAINE,   i895 


(Zorn) 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


By  STEFAN  ZWEIG 


Authorized  Translation  by 
O.  F.  THEIS 


>    >   >  i 


LUCE  AND  COMPANY 

BOSTON 

MAUNSEL  AND  CO.,  LTD. 
DUBLIN  and  LONDON 


3/^ 


Copyright,  1913, 

By  L.  E.  Bassett 

Boston,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


•  -• 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


541517 


PAUL  VERLM^E 

PRELUDE      ^    ' 

The  works  of  great  artists  are  silent 
books  of  eternal  truths.  And  thus  it  is 
indelibly  written  in  the  face  of  Balzac, 
as  Rodin  has  graven  it,  that  the  beauty 
of  the  creative  gesture  is  wild,  unwill- 
ing and  painful.  He  has  shown  that 
great  creative  gifts  do  not  mean  fulness 
and  giving  out  of  abundance.  On  the 
contrary  the  expression  is  that  of  one 
who  seeks  help  and  strives  to  emanci- 
pate himself.  A  child  when  afraid 
thrusts  out  his  arms,  and  those  that  are 
falling  hold  out  the  hand  to  passers-by 
for  aid;  similarly,  creative  artists  pro- 
ject their  sorrows  and  joys  and  all  their 
sudden  pain  which  is  greater  than  their 
own  strength.  They  hold  them  out  like 
a  net  with  which  to  ensnare,  like  a  rope 
1 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

by  which  to  escape.  Like  beggars  on 
the  street  weighed  down  with  misery 
and  want,  they  give  their  words  to  pass- 
ers-by: .;  Each  syllable  gives  relief  be- 
, cause  they  tlms  project  their  own  life 
;  into ;  that  of,  strangers.  Their  fortune 
and  misfortune,  their  rejoicing  and 
complaint,  too  heavy  for  them,  are 
sown  in  the  destiny  of  others  —  man 
and  woman.  The  fertilizing  germ  is 
planted  at  this  moment  which  is  simul- 
taneously painful  and  happy,  and  they 
rejoice.  But  the  origin  of  this  impulse, 
as  of  all  others,  lies  in  need,  sweet,  tor- 
menting need,  over-ripe  painful  force. 

No  poet  of  recent  years  has  possessed 
this  need  of  expressing  his  life  to  others, 
more  imperatively,  pitifully,  or  tra- 
gically than  Paul  Verlaine,  because  no 
other  poet  was  so  weak  to  the  press  of 
destiny.  All  his  creative  virtue  is  re- 
versed strength;  it  is  weakness.  Since 
he  could  not  subdue,  the  plaint  alone 
remained  to  him;  since  he  could  not 
mould  circumstances,  they  glimmer  in 
2 


PAUL    VEBLAINE 

naked,  untamed,  humanly  -  divine 
beauty  through  his  work.  Thus  he  has 
achieved  a  primaeval  lyricism  —  pure 
humanity,  simple  complaint,  humble- 
ness, infantile  lisping,  wrath  and  re- 
proach; primitive  sounds  in  sublime 
form,  like  the  sobbing  wail  of  a  beaten 
child,  the  uneasy  cry  of  those  who  are 
lost,  the  plaintive  call  of  the  solitary 
bird  which  is  thrown  out  into  the  dusk 
of  evening. 

Other  poets  have  had  a  wider  range. 
There  have  been  the  criers  who  with  a 
clarion  horn  call  together  the  wander- 
ers on  all  the  highways,  the  magicians 
who  weave  notes  like  the  rustling  of 
leaves,  the  soughing  of  winds  and  the 
bubbling  of  water,  and  the  masters  who 
embrace  all  the  wisdom  of  life  in  dark 
sayings.  He  possessed  nothing  but  the 
sign-manual  of  the  weak  who  have  need 
of  another,  the  gestures  of  a  beggar. 
But  in  all  their  accents  and  nuances,  in 
him,  these  became  wonderful.  In  him 
were  the  low  grumbling  of  the  weak 
3 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

man,  sometimes  closely  akin  to  the  sor- 
rowful mumbling  of  the  drunkard,  the 
tender  flute  notes  of  vague  and  melan- 
cholic yearning,  as  well  as  the  hard  ac- 
cusing hammering  against  his  own 
heart.  There  were  in  him  the  flagellant 
strokes  of  the  penitent  as  well  as  the  in- 
timate prayers  of  thanksgiving  which 
poor  women  murmur  on  church  steps. 
Other  poets  have  been  so  interwoven 
with  the  universal  that  it  is  impossible 
to  distinguish  whether  really  great 
storms  trembled  in  their  breasts, 
whether  the  sea  rolled  within  them,  or 
again,  whether  it  was  not  their  words, 
which  made  the  meadows  shudder,  and 
which,  as  a  breeze,  went  tenderly  over 
the  fields.  They  were  the  vivifying 
poets,  the  synthesizers  —  divinities  by 
the  marvel  of  creation,  and  its  priests. 

Verlaine  was  always  only  a  human 
being,  a  weak  human  being,  who  did  not 
even  know  how  "  to  count  the  trans- 
gressions of  his  own  heart."  It  was 
this  very  lack  of  individuality,  however, 
4 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

which  produced  something  much  rarer 
-^-  the  purely  and  entirely  human.  Ver- 
laine  was  soft  clay  without  the  power 
of  producing  impresses  and  without  re- 
sistance. Thus  every  line  of  life  cross- 
ing his  destiny  has  left  a  pure  relief,  a 
clear  and  faithful  reproduction,  even  to 
the  fragrance-like  sorrows  of  lonely 
seconds  which  in  others  fade  away  or 
thicken  into  dull  grief.  The  tangled 
forces  which  tempestuously  shook  his 
life  and  tore  it  to  tatters  crystallized  in 
his  work  and  were  distilled  into  es- 
sences. 

This,  together  with  the  fact  that  he 
has  enriched  and  furthered  literary  de- 
velopment by  his  poetry,  is  the  highest 
and  noblest  meed  of  praise  that  can  be 
given  to  a  poet.  Yet  such  an  estimate 
seems  too  low  to  many  of  his  followers, 
especially  the  more  recent  French  liter- 
ati who  celebrate  in  Verlaine  the  un- 
conscious inventor  of  a  new  art  of  poe- 
try and  the  initiator  of  new  lyric  epochs, 
unknowing  of  the  folly  of  their  pro- 
5 


4 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

ceeding.  Verlaine,  the  literary  man, 
was  a  sad  caricature  distorted  by  ribald 
noise  and  Quartier-Latin  cafes.  Even 
as  such  he  indignantly  denied  this  in- 
tention. The  greatness  and  power  of 
his  lyricism  takes  its  root  in  eternity, 
in  the  wonderful  sincerity  of  its  ever 
human  and  unalterable  emotional  con- 
tent, and  above  all  in  the  unconscious- 
ness of  its  genesis. 

Intellectuals  alone  create  "  tenden- 
cies.' '  Verlaine  was  as  little  one  of 
these  as  he  was  on  the  other  hand  the 
bon  enfant,  the  innocently  stumbling 
child  into  whose  open  and  playful  hand 
verses  fell  like  cherry  blossoms  or  flut- 
tering leaves.  He  was  a  lyric  poet. 
Lyricism  is  thinking  without  logic  (al- 
though not  contrary  to  logic) ,  associa- 
tion not  according  to  the  laws  of 
thought  but  according  to  intuition,  the 
whispering  words  of  vague  emotions, 
hidden  correspondences,  darkly  mur- 
muring subterranean  streams.  Lyri- 
cism again  is  thought  without  conse- 
6 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

quence,  instinct  and  presentiment,  leap- 
ing quickly  in  lawless  synthesis;  it  is 
union  but  not  a  chain  formed  of  indi- 
vidual links,  it  is  melody  but  not  scales. 
In  this  sense  he  was  an  unconscious 
creator  who  heard  great  accords. 

He  was  never  a  thinker.  His  quick 
power  of  observation,  flashing  electric- 
ally, his  Gallic  wit,  and  his  exquisite 
feeling  for  style  were  able  to  illu- 
mine splendidly,  narrow  circles,  but  he 
lacked,  as  in  everything,  the  power  and 
ability  of  logical  sequence.  He  knew 
how  to  seize  and  throw  light  upon 
waves  that  came  to  touch  his  life,  but  he 
could  not  make  them  reflect  in  the 
dark  mirror  of  the  universe,  nor  could 
he  throw  out  into  the  world  rays  of 
curious  and  tormenting  desire  for  life. 
He  could  not  construct  a  world  vision, 
revolution,  and  a  sense  of  distance. 
This  wild  and  heroic  trait  of  the  great 
poets  was  never  his.  He  preferred, 
fleeting  and  weak  spirit  as  he  was,  the 
indefinite,  not  quiet  and  possession,  nor 
7 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

understanding  and  power,  which  are 
the  elemental  factors  of  life.  He  sur- 
rendered himself  completely  to  the  ef- 
florescence of  things,  to  the  sweetness 
of  becoming  and  the  sadness  of  evan- 
escence, to  the  pain  and  tenderness  of 
emotions  that  touch  us  in  passing;  in 
short,  to  the  things  that  come  to  us  and 
not  to  those  which  we  must  seek  and 
strive  to  penetrate.  He  was  never  a 
drawn  bow  ready  to  fling  himself  as  an 
arrow  into  the  infinite;  he  was  only  an 
aeolian  harp,  the  play  and  voice  of  such 
winds  as  came.  Unresistingly  he  threw 
himself  into  the  arms  of  all  dangers  — 
women,  religiosity,  drunkenness  and 
literature.  All  this  oppressed  him  and 
rent  him  asunder.  The  drops  of  blood 
are  magnificent  poems,  imperishable 
events,  primaeval  human  emotion  clear 
as  crystal. 

Two    factors    were    responsible    for 
this:    an  unexampled  candor  in  both 
virtue  and  vice,  and  his  complete  un- 
consciousness, which,  however,  was  un- 
8 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

fortunately  lost  in  the  first  waves  of  his 
fame.  As  he  never  knew  how  to  weed, 
his  life  forced  strange  blossoms  and 
became  a  wonderful  garden  of  seduc- 
tively beautiful,  perversely  colored 
flowers,  among  which  he  himself  was 
never  entirely  at  home.  In  middle  life 
he  found  the  courage,  or  rather  an  im- 
pulse within  him  mightier  than  his  will 
forced  him  to  do  so,  and  with  relentless 
tread  he  left  civilization.  He  ex- 
changed the  warm  cover  of  an  estab- 
lished literary  reputation  for  the  occa- 
sional shelter  along  the  highways. 
With  the  smoke  of  his  pipe  he  blew  into 
the  air  the  esteem  he  had  acquired 
early.  He  never  returned  to  the  safe 
harbor.  Later,  as  "  man  of  letters,"  he 
unfortunately  exaggerated  this  as  well 
as  every  other  of  his  unique  character- 
istics, in  an  idle  exhibitionism,  and 
made  literary  use  of  them. 

Far    distant    from    academies    and 
journals,  he  retained  his  uniqueness  un- 
interruptedly for  many  years.    He  has 
9 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

described  in  his  verses  the  errant  and 
passionate  way  of  his  life  with  that 
noble  absence  of  shame  which  is  the 
first  sign  of  personal  emancipation 
from  civilized  humanity,  in  contrast  to 
the  primitively  natural. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  as  to 
whether  happiness  or  unhappiness  was 
the  result  of  the  pilgrimage.  It  is  an 
unimportant  and  idle  question,  because 
"  happiness  "  is  only  a  word,  an  un- 
filled cup  in  strange  hands,  and  an 
empty  tinkling  thing.  At  any  rate,  life 
cut  more  deeply  into  his  flesh  than  into 
that  of  any  other  poet  of  our  time.  So 
tightly  and  pitilessly  was  his  soul 
wound  about  that  nothing  was  kept 
silent,  and  it  bled  to  death  with  sighs, 
rejoicings,  and  cries.  A  destiny  which 
has  accomplished  such  marvels  may  he 
rebuked  as  cruel.  But  we  in  whom 
these  pains  re-echo  in  sweet  shudder- 
ings  —  for  us,  it  is  fitting  that  we 
should  feel  gratitude. 


10 


CONCERNING  "POOR  LE- 
LIAN  " 1 

Whenever  Verlaine  speaks  of  his 
childhood,  there  is  a  gleam  like  a  bitter- 
sweet smile.  This  hesitant,  plaintive 
rhythm  appears  ever,  and  ever  again, 
whether  in  sorrow,  musing  sigh,  or 
plaintive  reproach.  It  appears  in  the 
tender  and  so  infinitely  sad  lines  which 
he  wrote  in  prison,  and  likewise  in  the 
Confessions,  a  vain,  exaggeratedly  can- 
did and  coquetting  portrait  in  prose. 
Gentle  memories,  fresh  and  tender  like 
white  roses,  creep  loosely  through  all 
his  work,  scattering  pious  fragrance 
For  him  childhood  was  paradise,  be- 
cause his  poor  weak  soul,  needing  the 
tenderness  of  faithful  hands,  had  not 
yet  experienced  the  hard  impacts  of 

x  In  French  Paicvre  Lelian,  an  anagram  of  Paul  Ver- 
laine, which  Verlaine  often  used  when  speaking  of 
himself. 

11 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

life,  but  only  the  soft  intimate  cradling 
between  devoted  love  and  womanly 
mildness  —  a  lulling,  sweet  unforget- 
table melody. 

All  impulses  are  still  pure  and  bud- 
like. Love  is  unsullied,  sheer  instinct, 
entirely  without  desire  and  restlessness. 
It  is  silence,  peaceful  silence,  cool  long- 
ing which  assuages,  and  so  all  of  life 
is  kind  and  large,  maternal  and  wom- 
anly—  soft.  Everything  shines  in  a 
clear,  transparent,  shimmering  light 
like  a  landscape  at  daybreak.  Even 
late,  very  late,  when  his  poor  life  had 
already  become  barren  and  over- 
clouded, this  yearning  still  rises  and 
trembles  toward  these  days  of  youth 
like  a  white  dove.  The  "  guote  suen- 
daere  **  still  had  tears  to  give.  Gleam- 
ing pure  like  dew  drops,  and  still  fresh, 
they  cling  to  the  most  fantastic  and 
wildest  blooms. 

The  first  dates  tell  little.  Paul 
Marie  Verlaine  was  born  in  1844  at 
Metz  —  he  did  not  remember  his  sec- 
12 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

ond  name  until  the  appropriate  time  of 
his  conversion.  His  father  was  a  cap- 
tain in  the  French  engineer  corps. 
Verlaine,  however,  was  not  of  Alsatian 
extraction  but  belonged  to  Lorraine, 
close  enough  to  Germany  to  bear  in  his 
blood  the  secret  fructification  of  the 
German  Lied.  Early  in  his  life  the 
family  removed  to  Paris,  where  the  at- 
tractive boy  with  inquisitive,  soft  face 
(as  is  shown  on  an  early  photograph) 
soon  turns  into  a  gosse  and  finally  into 
a  government  official  with  skillful  lit- 
erary talents. 

Several  pleasing  episodes  and  a  few 
kind  figures  are  found  within  this  sim- 
ple frame  of  his  external  life.  Two  in 
particular  are  drawn  in  subdued  deli- 
cate colors  and  veiled  with  a  tender 
fragrance.  Both  were  women.  His 
mother,  all  goodness  and  devotion, 
spoiling  him  with  too  much  tenderness 
and  forgiveness,  passes  through  his  life 
with  uniformly  quiet  tread;  she  is  a 
wonderfully  noble  martyr.  There  is 
13 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

hardly  a  more  poignant  story  than  the 
one  he  tells  regretfully  in  the  Confes- 
sions of  the  time  when  he  first  began  to 
drink  and  how  his  mother  never  voiced 
her  reproach.  Once  when  with  hat  on 
his  head  he  had  slept  out  the  remainder 
of  a  wild  night,  her  only  comment  was 
the  silent  one  of  holding  a  mirror  be- 
fore him. 

And  there  is  no  more  tragic  incident 
among  the  many  sentences  of  the 
drunkard  than  the  verdict  of  the  tribu- 
nal at  Vouziers,  which  condemned  him 
to  a  fine  of  five  hundred  francs  for 
threatening  to  kill  his  mother.  Even 
then,  though  absinthe  had  changed  the 
simple  child  always  ready  for  penance 
into  a  different  man,  her  gesture  was 
still  the  noble  and  inimitable  one  of 
forgiveness. 

There  were  also  other  tender  hands 
to  watch  over  his  youth.  His  cousin 
Eliza,  who  died  early,  is  a  figure  so  mild 
and  transparent  and  of  so  light  a  tread 
that  she  appears  like  one  of  Jacobsen's 
14 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

wonderful  creations  who  wander  and 
speak  like  disembodied  souls.  She  had 
the  unique  beauty  of  early  illness,  and 
on  that  account  perhaps  turned  more 
toward  the  absorbed  but  not  melan- 
choly child,  excusing  his  escapades. 
She  was  loved  tenderly,  with  a  child's 
love  that  was  without  desire  and  dan- 
ger. 

"  Certes  oui  pauvre  maman  etait 
Bien,  trop  bonne,  et  mon  coeur  a  la  voir 

palpitait, 
Tressamblait,  et  riait  et  pleurait  de  l'en- 

tendre 
Mais  toi,  je  t'aimais  autrement  non  pas 

plus  tendre 
Plus  familier,  voila." 

It  was  she  too  who  staged  his  last 
youthful  folly  by  giving  him  the  money 
for  printing  the  Poemes  Saturniens. 
Like  a  white  flame  her  figure  shines 
through  the  dense  stifling  fumes  of  his 
life.  It  is  as  if  the  soft  tread  of  these 
two  women  had  given  many  of  his 
15 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

verses  their  seraphic  sheen  and  lent  the 
mother-of-pearl  opalescence  to  his  soft- 
est poems,  in  which  there  is  a  secret 
rustling  as  of  the  folds  of  women's 
gowns.  Even  the  Paul  Verlaine  of  the 
later  years,  "  the  ruin  insufficiently 
ruined,"  who  saw  in  woman  the  most 
ferocious  enemy,  and  who  fled  to  the 
wolves  that  they  might  protect  him 
from  "  woman  their  sister,"  even  he  still 
dreamed  of  the  folded  hands,  of  the  for- 
giving innocent  gesture  of  the*  earliest 
memories.  This  yearning  for  mild  and 
pure  women  has  found  many  incarna- 
tions. In  the  poems  to  his  bride,  Ma- 
thilde  Mante,  it  is  the  tender  song  of 
the  troubadour;  in  the  hours  of  his 
mystical  conversion  it  becomes  a  tender 
prayer  and  Madonna  cult ;  in  the  years 
of  his  decadence  it  appears  as  a  pathetic 
echo,  a  stumbling  plaint  and  dreamy 
childhood  desires  —  the  precious  hour 
between  sin  and  sin.  Sometimes  this 
secret  desire  is  placed  tenderly  and 
simply  into  lines  of  verse  as  into  a  rare, 
16 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

fragrant  shrine  where  the  dearest  pos- 
sessions are  kept.  These  are  pure,  won- 
derful lines  like  the  following,  full  of 
longing  and  renunciation: 

"  Je  voudrais,  si  ma  vie  etait  encore  a 

faire, 
Qu'une  femme  tres  calme  habitat  avec 

moi." 

Verlaine  soon  left  these  mirror-clear 
days  of  beautiful  youth.  His  father 
decided  to  put  him  into  a  boarding- 
school  at  Paris.  The  dreamy  little 
boy,  looking  toward  the  gay  school  cap, 
gladly  assented.  This  was  the  turning 
point.  Here  his  life  in  a  way  was  rent 
in  two  parts,  and  a  wide  gap  appears  in 
the  weakly  but  not  morbid  character  of 
the  child.  The  somewhat  spoiled,  mod- 
est, and  confiding  boy  is  put  among 
students  who  are  already  dissolute  and 
overbearing.  On  the  very  first  day  he 
is  sickened  by  the  coldness  and  barren- 
ness of  the  rooms,  and  frightened  by  the 
17 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

first  contact  with  life  he  is  instinctively- 
afraid  of  the  evil  which  was  to  overtake 
him  after  all.  Filled  with  that  mighty 
longing  for  tenderness  and  gentle  shel- 
ter which  even  at  fifty  he  did  not  lose, 
he  fled  to  his  home  in  tears.  He  was 
greeted  there  with  cries  of  joy  and  em- 
braces, but  on  the  next  morning  he  was 
taken  back  with  gentle  force. 

This  was  the  catastrophe.  Verlaine's 
weak  character  willingly  submitted  to 
foreign  influences;  it  became  dulled 
under  the  influence  of  his  comrades, 
"  and  the  overthrow  began."  A  for- 
eign element  entered  his  being,  a  mate- 
rialistic cynical  trait,  for  the  present 
only  gaminerie,  while  he  was  still  a 
stranger  to  sex.  The  specific  Parisian 
character,  a  mingling  of  vanity,  inso- 
lence, scoffing  wit  (raillerie)  and  boasfc 
ful  bravado,  tempted  the  soft  dreamy 
boy,  but  conquered  him  only  for  short 
hours. 

This  conflict  between  feminine  sensi- 
tivity and  a  gaminerie  eager  for 
18 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

enjoyment  wages  incessant  warfare 
throughout  his  life.  Sometimes  it  har- 
monizes for  brief  moments  voluptuous- 
ness and  idealism,  but  neither  side  ever 
wins  and  the  struggle  never  ceases. 
The  characteristics  of  Faust  and  Me- 
phistopheles  never  became  fully  linked 
in  Verlaine;  they  only  interlaced. 
With  the  overpowering  capacity  for 
self -surrender  which  he  spent  on  every- 
thing, he  could  combine  the  sensual 
alone  or  the  spiritual  alone  completely 
with  his  life,  but  lacking  will,  he  was 
unable  to  put  an  end  to  the  constant 
rotation,  which  now  dragged  him  in 
penitence  from  his  passions  only  to  hurl 
him  back  again  into  their  hated  hands. 
Thus  his  life  consists  not  of  an  evenly 
ascending  plane,  but  of  headlong  de- 
scents and  catastrophes,  of  elevations 
and  transfigurations,  which  finally  end 
in  a  great  weariness. 

The  sense  of  shame  was  exceptionally 
strong  in  him,  as  it  is  in  every  case 
where  it  is  repressed.    All  his  life  long 
19 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

it  made  itself  heard  in  the  form  of 
yearning  for  clarity  and  purity.  Afraid 
of  mockery,  cynicism  and  indifference 
were  put  forward  as  a  protection  until 
at  length  these  evil  influences  overgrew 
it  entirely.  Were  it  not  unwise  to  re- 
flect in  directions  which  his  life  dis- 
dained to  follow,  it  might  be  interesting 
to  attempt  a  portrait  of  Verlaine  as  he 
might  have  been  if  he  had  continued  on 
the  luminous  path  of  his  childhood  un- 
der the  guidance  of  kind  hands.  For 
surely  and  also  according  to  his  own 
opinion,  those  years  were  the  humus  for 
the  fleurs  du  mal  of  his  soul. 

In  these  formative  years  of  ungainly 
figure  and  uncertain  dreaming  the  poet 
grows  out  of  the  boy.  A  malign  influ- 
ence, puberty,  forces  the  creator  in  him. 
"  The  man  of  letters,  let  us  say  rather, 
if  you  prefer,  the  poet  was  born  in  me 
precisely  toward  that  so  critical  four- 
teenth year,  so  that  I  can  say  propor- 
tionately as  my  puberty  developed  my 
character  too  was  formed.' '  This  is 
20 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

surely  a  womanly  and  feminine  trait, 
for  in  women  the  entire  spiritual  devel- 
opment usually  trembles  as  the  reso- 
nance of  the  inner  shock.  Physical 
crises  are  transformed  into  catastrophes 
of  the  soul,  and  the  pressure  of  the 
blood  and  its  beating  waves  are  spirit- 
ualized into  the  soft  melancholy  and 
sweet  dreams  from  which  his  verses  rise 
like  tender  buds. 

It  is  not  out  of  intellectual  growth  or 
out  of  the  persistent  impulse  to  link  the 
universal  to  his  personality,  as  in  the 
cases  of  Schiller,  Victor  Hugo  or  Lord 
Byron,  that  these  soft  notes  rise.  They 
have  their  origin  in  a  sultry  restlessness 
of  the  nerves,  in  the  well-springs  of 
fruitful  impulse,  in  emotions  and  shad- 
owy presentiments.  They  are  the  early 
outpouring  of  creative  masculinity  and 
youthful  yearning.  They  are  half  a 
question  and  half  an  answer  to  life. 
They  are  melancholy  and  vague,  filled 
with  uncertain  gleaming  and  a  rustling 
darkness. 

21 


PAUL    VEBLAINE 

If  poetry  consists  in  a  certain  sensi- 
tiveness of  soul  and  reaction  to  slight 
and  cautious  stimulation,  and  not  in  an 
active,  wild,  subduing  force,  Verlaine 
certainly  has  sensed  the  deepest  fount 
of  the  orphic  mysteries.  If  poetry  is  so 
understood,  the  boy  who  wrote  the 
Poemes  Saturniens  on  his  school 
benches,  already  saw  the  reality  of  life 
and  even  the  future  mask.  His  acute 
ear  heard  the  oracle  which  foretold  his 
destiny,  but  he  did  not  know  how  to  in- 
terpret what  the  Pythian  voice  had 
whispered  until  everything  was  ful- 
filled. To  understand  this,  sensitive- 
ness must  not  be  confused  with  senti- 
mentality. Sentimentality  may  grow 
out  of  a  pessimism  which  has  been  ac- 
quired intellectually.  Sensitivity  is  not 
only  the  child  of  emotion  but  at  the 
same  time  the  sum  and  substance  of  all 
feelings.  It  is  both  an  inherent  tend- 
ency and  an  innate  possession,  and  is 
primaeval  and  indestructible  as  is  the 
gift  of  poetry  itself.     The  gift  of  po- 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

etry  implies  the  power  of  distilling  emo- 
tions into  that  form  in  which  they  are 
already  essentially  existing  and  fixing 
the  fleeting  and  ephemeral  permanently 
as  by  a  chemical  process  which  knows 
no  law  but  only  presentiment  and 
chance. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  art  without  its 
technique,  understanding  technique  not 
in  the  derogatory  sense  of  a  mere  imple- 
ment but  somewhat  in  the  sense  of  the 
material  which  the  painter  uses,  who 
must  apply  it  individually  and  thus 
adds  something  unknown  and  unique  to 
what  he  has  acquired  by  education  and 
copying.  Verlaine  learned  his  tech- 
nique early,  and  he  never  wrote  a  line  in 
which  his  own  guidance  could  be  felt. 
His  earliest  teachers  were  Baudelaire, 
Banville,  Victor  Hugo,  Catulle  Mendes 
and  other  Parnassiens,  cool  idealists  or 
frosty  exotics,  measured  and  stiff  even 
in  their  melancholy,  but  wise  architects 
of  slender  and  firmly  founded  verse- 
structures,  artists  in  language,  chisel- 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

lers  of  form.  The  pliant,  soft  yielding 
manner  of  Verlaine  quickly  embraced 
their  influences.  The  student  is  already 
master  of  the  metier.  Even  the  relent- 
less and  unhappy  rhymester  into  which 
"  poor  Lelian  "  turned,  late,  very  late 
in  his  career,  retained  this  eminent  skill 
of  reproducing  forms  smoothly  and 
precisely,  and  writing  verses  of  an 
agreeable,  melodic  flow  and  a  beautiful 
rhythmic  movement. 

The  years  of  puberty  were  the  time 
of  the  production  of  the  Poemes  Satur- 
niens.  Sexuality  had  not  yet  developed 
sufficiently  and  was  not  strong  and  self- 
willed  enough  to  operate  destructively. 
Its  influence  was  only  felt  in  slight  im- 
pacts and  produced  the  feeling  of  sweet 
unrest.  This  unrest,  somewhat  veiled 
and  turning  toward  melancholy,  trem- 
bles through  these  early  poems  and 
lends  them  the  unique  beauty  of  sad 
women.  All  the  art  of  Verlaine's  po- 
etry is  already  found  in  these  first 
poems. 

24 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

The  book  appeared,  thanks  to  the  as- 
sistance of  his  cousin  Eliza,  under  Le- 
merre's  imprint,  curiously  enough  on 
the  same  day  as  Francois  Coppee's  first 
work,  and  had  a  fC  joli  succes  de  hosti- 
lity **  with  the  press.  The  great  writers 
—  Victor  Hugo,  Leconte  de  Lisle, 
Theodore  de  Banville,  and  others  — 
wrote  him  encouraging  letters,  but  the 
public  at  large  did  not  overburden  the 
young  man  with  its  admiration. 

At  that  time  Verlaine  was  a  clerk  in 
the  Hotel  de  Ville  and  lived  a  quiet, 
almost  well-to-do  life,  with  his  mother. 
All  the  indications  were  in  favor  of  a 
smooth,  unclouded  future.  But  there 
was  a  conflict  in  him,  which  he  could  not 
master.  It  is  like  raising  and  lowering 
two  weights  which  he  never  succeeds  in 
balancing.  On  the  one  hand  is  the  pas- 
sionate, wild,  sexual  element,  the  im- 
pure glow  and  the  blind  surrender,  the 
"  black  ship  which  drags  him  to  the 
abyss,"  and,  on  the  other,  the  pure, 
simple,  tender  mode  of  his  child-like 
25 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

heart,  which,  a  stranger  to  all  passion, 
yearns  for  soft,  womenly  hands. 

In  normal  sexuality  the  yearning  of 
the  senses  and  the  soul  unite  during  the 
seconds  of  intoxication  and  become  the 
symbol  of  infinity,  through  the  passion- 
ate absorption  of  contrasts  and  the  per- 
meation of  spirit  with  matter,  and  form 
with  substance,  elements  which  in  their 
turn  are  the  creative  symbols  of  all  life. 
In  Verlaine,  however,  there  was  always 
a  cleft:  now  he  is  pure  pilgrim  of 
yearning,  now  roue;  now  priest,  now 
gamin.  He  has  wrought  the  most 
beautiful  religious  poems  of  Catholi- 
cism, and  at  the  same  time  has  won  the 
crown  of  all  pornographic  works  with 
perverse  and  indecent  poems.  As  the 
flux  of  his  blood  went,  so  was  he  —  a 
pure  reflex  of  his  organic  functions. 
That  is  to  say  he  was  infinitely  primi- 
tive as  a  poet,  and  infinitely  compli- 
cated and  unaccountable  as  a  human 
being. 

Whenever  his  impulses  were  elastic 
26 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

and  his  senses  sharpened  or  stimulated, 
the  untamed  and  wild  beast  of  sensual- 
ity is  unchained  in  his  life,  turbulent 
after  satisfaction,  incapable  of  restraint 
by  intellectual  deliberation.  After  the 
crisis  physical  exhaustion  disengaged 
the  psychic  elements  of  penitence,  con- 
sideration and  tender  longing,  which 
later  became  piety. 

Verlaine  was  a  poet  of  rare  candor 
and  shamelessness,  both  in  the  best  and 
worst  sense.  This  is  the  essentially 
great  element  in  his  otherwise  feminine, 
weak  and  absolutely  negative  personal- 
ity. The  primaeval  powers  of  the  body 
and  soul  are  the  eternal  elements  of  all 
humanity  and  the  starting-point  of  all 
philosophies ;  the  conflict  between  them, 
betrayed  in  the  accusing  and  self-re- 
vealing manner  of  his  verse,  is  trans- 
f errel  unchanged  into  his  poetry,  filling 
it  with  the  force  of  life  and  the  tragedy 
of  the  universally  human. 

In  his  entire  life  there  seem  to  have 
been  only  two  brief  periods  of  cessation 
27 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

in  the  struggle;  during  the  short 
honeymoon  or  period  of  normal  sexual- 
ity and  during  his  first  religious  epoch, 
when  he  was  sincere,  and  enthusiasm 
and  yearning,  transfused  in  the  symbols 
of  faith  and  religious  veneration,  inter- 
penetrated and  inflamed  each  other. 

The  Fetes  Galantes  were  published 
soon  after  the  Poemes  Saturniens.  Ar- 
tistically they  are  far  superior,  because 
their  form  is  more  individual,  their 
structure  more  original,  and  their  archi- 
tecture more  compact.  Yet  they  do  not 
appear  to  me  to  represent  balance,  but 
rather  the  short  trembling,  to-and-fro 
wavering  of  the  scales  of  his  impetuous 
and  sensitive  character. 

They  are  coquettish;  and  coquetry 
is  sensuality  with  style,  tamed  accord- 
ingly, but  not  conquered.  They  are  at 
the  same  time  modest  and  impudent, 
attack  and  careful  retreat.  They  are 
not  pure  sensuality,  but  desire,  masked 
by  a  demand  for  modesty. 

It  is  the  most  characteristically 
28 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

French  of  his  books,  drawn  as  with  the 
maliciously  kind  brush  of  Watteau.  In 
these  poems,  in  which  Verlaine's  muse 
trips  on  high-heeled  shoes  through  gar- 
dens which  shimmer  in  the  gleam  of  a 
mocking  moon,  in  these  whispering  dia- 
logues between  Pierrots  and  Colum- 
bines, in  these  gallant  landscapes,  an 
anxious  presentiment  weeps  plaintively 
in  the  bushes.  This  sad  mode  makes 
the  dallying  faces  gleam  underneath 
tears.  The  true  voice  of  the  yearning 
soul  is  poured  out  and  dies  away  in  the 
imperishable  Colloque  Sentimentale,  a 
dark  pearl  of  indefinite,  infinite  sorrow. 
Out  of  masks  and  pantomimes,  the 
poet's  face  stares  sadly  bewildered  into 
the  black  mirror  of  reality. 

At  that  time  an  evil  influence  had 
broken  into  his  life,  perhaps  the  most 
destructive,  "  the  one  unpardonable 
vice,"  as  he  himself  confesses.  Verlaine 
began  to  drink.  At  first  it  was  bravado, 
recklessness,  persuasion;  later  it  was 
desire,  torture,  flight  from  the  qualms 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

of  his  conscience,   "  the  forgetfulness, 
sought  in  execrable  potions." 

He  drank  absinthe,  a  sweetish,  green- 
ish liquid,  which  is  false  as  cat's  eyes 
and  treacherous  and  murderous  like  a 
diseased  harlot.  Baudelaire's  hashish  is 
comprehensible.  It  was  the  magician 
who  raised  fantastic  landscapes,  it 
quieted  the  nerves,  it  was  the  poet  of 
the  poet.  Verlaine's  absinthe  is  only 
destructive  and  obliterating,  a  slow  poi- 
son which  does  not  kill  but  unnerves 
and  undermines  like  the  white  powders 
the  dreaded  secret  of  which  the  Borgias 
held.  Absinthe  wrought  silently  and 
inexorably  in  Verlaine's  life.  By  de- 
grees it  absorbed  the  tender,  soft, 
yearning,  vague  qualities  of  his  heart 
of  a  child ;  it  made  the  hard,  passionate, 
depraved  man  strong,  and  awakened 
the  sensualist  and  cynic  in  him.  Even 
when  the  high-arched  churches  and  the 
figures  of  the  Madonnas  no  longer  of- 
fered him  a  place  of  refuge,  "  the  atro- 
cious green  sorceress  "  was  still  his  only 
SO 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

comforter,  into  whose  arms  he  willingly 
cast  himself. 

He  himself  tells  regretfully  how  at 
the  time  of  his  cousin  Eliza's  death,  soon 
after  the  appearance  of  his  first  book, 
he  joined  sorrow  and  vice  in  tragic 
manner.  For  two  days  he  had  not 
touched  food.  But  he  drank,  drank 
without  interruption,  restlessly,  and  re- 
turned to  the  offices  a  drunkard,  drown- 
ing the  reproof  of  his  superior  in  a  new 
absinthe.  Everything  that  was  hard, 
bitter,  wild,  which  later  broke  loose  in 
him  so  tempestuously,  compelling  the 
law  to  step  between  him  and  his  wife, 
his  mother  and  his  friends,  was  called 
forth  by  the  green  poison  in  the  silent, 
kindly  nature  which  loved  soft  words 
and  was  inclined  even  to  his  last  years 
to  the  power  of  hot  tears.  With  piti- 
less force  this  most  dangerous  of  his 
vices  drew  taut  the  chain,  by  which  the 
passions  and  sudden  catastrophe  of  his 
destiny  dragged  him  on  to  the  road  of 
misery. 

81 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

For  a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  every- 
thing were  to  come  to  a  good  end.  He 
fell  in  love  with  the  explosive  vehe- 
mence and  despairing  persistence  with 
which  the  weak  are  accustomed  to  cling 
to  an  idea.  The  step-sister  of  his 
friend,  de  Sivry,  had  fascinated  him. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  engagement 
came  about.  In  these  days,  separated 
from  his  bride,  Verlaine  wrote  the  slen- 
der volume  of  songs,  La  Bonne  Chan- 
son. It  is  his  most  quiet  and  balanced 
book.  According  to  his  own  repeatedly 
expressed  opinion,  he  considered  it  the 
most  beautiful  of  his  works  and  the  one 
dearest  to  him.  In  the  best  and  noblest 
sense  they  are  "  occasional  verses." 
Almost  daily  one  is  written  and  sent  to 
his  beloved.  It  was  only  in  small  selec- 
tion that  they  were  united  in  print.  * 

Here  the  idea  of  modesty  subdues 
passion  like  a  wonderful  sordine,  and 
surrender  and  tenderness  intertwine 
with  the  ideals  of  modesty.  The  cleft 
in  Verlaine's  personality  closes  in  the 
82 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

consonance  of  a  soul  which  has  found 
peace.  It  represents  the  first  period  of 
peace  in  his  life  and  career  and  is 
humanly  his  most  perfect  moment  and 
poetically  his  purest.  Vice  and  passion 
have  disappeared  in  a  hesitating  yet  de- 
sirous surrender,  melancholy  has  dis- 
solved in  melody. 

Victor  Hugo,  the  sovereign  coiner  of 
great  phrases,  called  the  Bonne  Chan- 
son, "  wne  fleur  dans  un  obus."  There 
are  poems  in  this  slim  volume  which 
seem  as  if  they  had  been  woven  out  of 
the  gushing  flood  of  moonlight.  There 
are  poems  which  gleam  like  pale  pearls 
and  lonely  pools.  Word  and  sense, 
form  and  emotion,  foreboding  and  be- 
ing, life  and  dreams,  are  their  woof. 
Here  appeared  that  marvel  of  French 
lyric  poetry,  the  wonderful  poem. 

"  La  lune  blanche 
Luit  dans  les  bois; 
De  chaque  branche 
Part  une  voix 
Sous  la  ramee.  .  .  . 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

"  Oh  bien-aimee! 

"  L'etang  reflete, 
Profond  miroir, 
La  silhouette 
Du  saule  noir 
Ou  le  vent  pleure  .  .  . 

"  Revons :    c'est  l'heure. 

"  Un  vaste  et  tendre 
Apaisement 
Semble  descendre 
Du  firmament 
Que  l'astre  irise  .  .  . 

"  C'est  Theure  exquise." 

From  this  point  on  the  life-story  in 
which  the  germ  and  seed  of  such  won- 
derful fruit  ripened  is  painful.  The 
descent  was  not  sudden.  Verlaine  was 
one  of  those  wavering  characters  who 
require  energetic  impulsion  for  good  as 
well  as  for  evil.  He  never  slid  as  on  an 
inclined  plane,  but  he  sank  like  a  scale 
weighed  down  by  something  unsus- 
pected.   Thus  it  is  possible  to  name  the 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

catastrophes  and  to  set  the  milestones 
of  his  misfortunes. 

The  great  wrench  which  in  1870 
shook  his  country,  also  affected  his  life 
and  tore  it  apart.  His  wedding  oc- 
curred during  the  days  of  the  war. 
The  fever  of  political  over-excitement 
seized  him  and  he,  the  almost  bourgeois 
government  clerk  who  never  troubled 
about  politics,  became  a  communist  as 
a  favor  to  several  friends.  The  anec- 
dote that  he  once  wished  to  assassinate 
Emperor  Napoleon  III  was  a  hoax 
which  he  told  his  comrades  for  the  sake 
of  the  sensation,  something  like  the 
story  which  Baudelaire  told  of  the 
"  savoriness  "  of  embryonal  brains. 

His  work  consisted  in  reading  the 
articles  on  the  Commune  which  ap- 
peared in  the  newspapers  and  marking 
them  whether  they  were  favorable  or 
unfavorable.  Nevertheless  this  insig- 
nificant part,  which  he  himself  did  not 
take  seriously  and  spoke  of  as  "  This 
stupid  enough  role  which  I  played  dur- 
35 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

ing  two  months  of  illusions,"  cost  him 
his  position.  This  was  the  break  with 
well-ordered  life  and  the  sign-post 
which  showed  him  the  way  into  the 
Boheme. 

The  old  wounds  re-opened.  Ver- 
laine  began  to  drink  again  during  his 
activities  in  the  Commune.  Recrimina- 
tions and  scenes  rose  as  the  result  of 
this  relapse.  Suddenly  came  the  de- 
cisive act  of  the  drunkard;  he  struck 
his  wife  the  first  blow.  New  misunder- 
standings followed,  but  the  household 
still  held  together,  soon  to  be  increased 
by  the  arrival  of  a  son. 

The  final  element  is  still  lacking. 
Abstractions  are  weak  against  realities, 
things  that  have  happened  may  change 
men  but  they  cannot  vanquish  them. 
So  far  everything  has  been  only  in- 
choate power  and  a  foreshadowing 
threat,  but  not  enchantment.  It  is  only 
the  magic  of  a  passion,  an  elemental 
and  unfathomable  magnetic  power 
which  links  one  human  being  to  an- 
36 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

other,  the  intangible,  which  can  conquer 
a  poet.  He  can  overcome  want  and  life 
because  he  despises  them ;  he  can  make 
evil  powerless  because  he  repents; 
chance  he  can  bridge;  but  he  cannot 
hold  back  destiny,  nor  win  battles  with 
the  incomprehensible. 

A   new   influence   enters    Verlaine's 
life  —  Arthur  Rimbaud. 


37 


THE    RIMBAUD   EPISODE 

No  matter  how  much  a  writer  may 
have  striven  for  the  unusual  or  have 
tried  to  order  confusing  ways  with  in- 
telligence and  form,  his  fiction  does  not 
reach  the  depths  nor  is  it  as  tragic  as 
this  one  which  life  devised.  The  begin- 
ning is  simple,  the  climax  grandiose,  of 
such  wildness  and  rising  to  such  heights, 
that  the  end  no  longer  could  be  pure 
tragedy.  It  turned  into  tragi-comedy, 
that  grotesque  sensation  which  we  feel 
when  destiny  grows  beyond  human 
beings  and  over-towers  them,  while 
they  are  still  struggling  with  pigmy 
hands  to  master  a  monstrous  force 
which  has  long  gone  beyond  their  con- 
trol. 

The  beginning  was  conventional. 
One  day  Verlaine  received  a  letter  from 
an  acquaintance  in  the  provinces,  in 
38 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

which  poems  by  a  fifteen-year-old  boy 
were  enclosed.  Verlaine's  opinion  was 
asked.  The  poems  were:  Les  Effares, 
Les  Assise  Les  Poetes  de  sept  cms,  Les 
Premieres  communions.  Every  one 
knows  they  were  Arthur  Rimbaud's, 
for  the  poems  of  this  boy  are  among 
the  most  precious  of  French  literature. 
He  began  where  the  best  stop  and  then, 
at  twenty,  threw  literature  aside  as 
something  irksome  and  unimportant. 
Verlaine  read  them  and  was  filled  with 
enthusiasm.  He  wrote  to  the  boy  in  a 
tone  of  glowing  admiration.  In  the 
meantime  the  poems  made  the  rounds 
in  Paris.  Words  of  characteristically 
French  emphasis  are  quickly  coined. 
Victor  Hugo  with  his  regal  gesture 
declared  the  author  to  be  "  Shakespeare 
enfant." 

The  provincial  associations  of  Char- 
leville  filled  Rimbaud  with  disgust  and 
unrest.  Verlaine  in  his  enthusiasm 
wrote  to  him  "  Come,  dear  great  soul, 
we  are  waiting  for  you,  we  want  you." 
39 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

He  himself  was  without  a  position  and 
his  own  life  in  Paris  at  that  time  was 
threatened  with  chaos  and  uncertainty, 
but  with  the  marvellous  folly  of  yield- 
ing and  emotional  natures  he  invited 
a  stranger  as  guest  into  his  shaken 
destiny. 

Rimbaud  came.  He  was  a  big,  robust 
fellow  filled  with  a  demonic  physical 
force  like  that  which  Balzac  has 
breathed  into  his  Vautrin  types.  He 
was  a  provincial  with  massive  red  fists 
and  the  curious  face  of  a  child  that  has 
been  corrupted  early  in  life  —  a  gamin, 
but  a  genius.  Everything  in  him  is 
force,  over-abundantv  wild,  exceptional 
virility,  without  aim  and  turned  toward 
the  infinite. 

He  is  one  of  the  conquistador  type, 
who  first  lost  his  way  in  literature.  He 
pours  everything  into  it,  fire,  fulness, 
force,  more,  much  more  than  great 
creators  spend.  Like  a  crater  he 
throws  out  his  mad  fever  dreams  and 
visions  of  life  such  as  perhaps  only 
40 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

Dante  has  had  before  him.  He  hurls 
everything  up  into  the  infinite  as  if  he 
would  shatter  it  to  bits.  Destruction 
teems  in  this  creation,  a  force  ardent 
for  power,  a  hand  that  would  seize 
everything  and  crush  it. 

His  poems  are  only  sudden  gestures 
of  wrath.  They  resemble  bloody  tat- 
ters of  raw  flesh  that  have  been  torn 
with  wild  teeth  from  the  body  of  real- 
ity. It  is  poetry  "  outside  and  above  " 
all  literature.  Has  there  ever  been  a 
poet  of  modern  times  who  thus  threw 
poems  on  paper  and  then  let  the  scraps 
flutter  to  the  four  winds?  Without 
pose,  unlike  Stefan  George  or  Mal- 
larme,  who  calculate  carefully,  he  de- 
spised the  public  and  literature.  He 
never  had  a  single  line  printed  by  his 
own  efforts,  he  was  utterly  regardless 
of  the  fleeting  examples  of  his  gigantic 
power.  At  twenty  he  left  his  fame  and 
companions  behind  to  wander  through 
the  world.  In  Africa  he  founded  fan- 
tastic realms,  he  sat  in  prison  and  there 
41 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

played  a  part  in  world  history  prepar- 
ing under  King  Menelik  for  the  strag- 
gle which  cost  Italy  her  provinces.  But 
in  three  years  he  wrote  many  poems 
full  of  power  and  fire,  including  the 
eternal  poem  Le  bateau  ivre,,  a  stagger- 
ing fever  dream,  into  which  all  the  col- 
ors, sounds,  forms  and  forces  of  life 
seem  to  have  been  poured,  bubbling  in 
curious  forms  and  seething  in  the  glow 
of  a  feverish  moment.  His  life  was 
like  a  dream,  as  wild,  as  mighty  and  as 
little  subject  to  time. 

Verlaine  gladly  sheltered  the  awk- 
ward boy.  Madame  Verlaine  was  less 
enthusiastic  and  never  concealed  her 
dislike.  Perhaps,  with  a  woman's  in- 
stinct, she  unconsciously  foresaw  the 
danger  which  threatened  Verlaine  in 
this  new  companion. 

The  bond  of  friendship  grew  closer 
and  closer.  Verlaine's  gaminerie  which 
was  ever  in  contrast  with  his  sensitivity, 
awakened  suddenly.  His  tendency 
toward  strong,  cynical  and  lascivious 
42 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

conversation  met  a  genial  match  in 
Rimbaud.  The  primitive  element  in 
Verlaine  was  suddenly  enchained  by 
the  primaeval,  purely  human  and  brutal 
masculinity  of  Rimbaud's  personality. 
The  feminine  in  his  nature  was  feeling 
for  completion.  As  if  predestined  for 
each  other  for  years,  their  personalities 
dovetail.  Without  any  affection,  by 
necessity  rather  than  by  friendship, 
their  union  becomes  closer  and  closer. 
One  day  in  1872  Verlaine  leaves  wife, 
child  and  the  world  in  which  he  lived  to 
wander  with  Rimbaud  into  the  un- 
known. 

Without  doubt  there  was  an  element 
of  the  abnormal  in  the  relations  be- 
tween Verlaine  and  Rimbaud,  but  to 
understand  their  friendship  it  is  neither 
necessary  nor  essential  to  know  whether 
the  dangerous  potentialities  that  inhere 
in  so  strong  a  personal  enthusiasm  ever 
became  material  facts. 

Their  path  led  over  the  highways 
and  also  through  prisons.  "  An  evil 
43 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

rage  for  travelling  "  had  seized  the  two. 
Through  Belgium,  through  Germany 
and  England  they  wandered;  usually 
they  were  without  means.  They  stayed 
in  London  for  a  while,  supporting 
themselves  by  teaching  languages  and 
delving  deeper  than  ever  into  social 
politics.  Rimbaud  left  and  returned 
just  in  time  to  convey  the  sick  Verlaine 
home.  The  terrible  life  which  he  had 
led  had  broken  him  down.  He  himself 
has  concealed  the  tragic  incidents  of 
those  days  in  a  novelette,  "  Louise  Le- 
clercq" 

There  he  wrote:  "The  few  half- 
crowns  which  he  earned  daily  in  giving 
lessons,  they  spent  in  the  evening  on 
Portuguese  wine  and  Irish  beer.  The 
stomach  was  forgotten,  the  head  be- 
came affected  and  the  lessons  were  not 
given,  and  thus  hunger  and  nervosity 
overcame  the  reason  of  this  brave  fel- 
low." 

The  patient  is  taken  to  Bouillon,  a 
small  town  in  the  Ardennes,  where 
44 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

Charles  van  Lerberghe,  the  great  Bel- 
gium poet,  lived,  but  he  has  hardly  half 
recovered  when  he  plunges  out  into  the 
world  again  with  Rimbaud.  Mental 
unrest  is  transformed  into  physical  un- 
rest. The  lack  of  stability  which  oper- 
ated most  impulsively  in  that  crisis,  ap- 
pears in  his  external  life.  There  is 
nothing  definite  for  which  he  is  seeking 
yet  he  is  unsatisfied.  Verlaine,  man  of 
moods  par  excellence ,  adjusts  himself 
to  life  in  his  own  manner.  He  becomes 
boorish,  subject  to  fits  of  passion,  vio- 
lent and  unaccountable.  His  tender- 
ness seems  to  have  been  strangled  by 
hunger,  drunkenness  and  wild  destiny. 
The  friendship  for  Rimbaud  also  as- 
sumes evil  shapes.  More  and  more  fre- 
quently they  quarrel;  almost  every 
hour  Rimbaud's  foaming  temperament 
and  Verlaine' s  temporary  hard,  wild 
manner  come  in  conflict.  Of  course,  as 
a  rule,  they  were  drunk.  Rimbaud,  who 
was  strong,  drank  because  of  his  feeling 
of  strength  and  because  he  yearned  for 
45 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

the  intoxication  in  which  colors  glowed, 
in  which  impulses  became  wilder,  and 
association  more  rapid,  acute  and 
bolder.  Verlaine  fled  to  absinthe  to 
drown  out  repentance,  anguish  and 
weakness ;  and  from  this  sweetish  drink, 
in  which  all  the  evil  forces  of  life  seem 
to  be  distilled,  he  drew  brutality  and 
feverish  disorders. 

Once  Verlaine  ran  away,  but  became 
repentant  and  asked  Rimbaud  to  join 
him.  Rimbaud  followed  him  to  Bel- 
gium. All  difficulties  were  about  to  be 
solved.  Madame  Verlaine  was  ready 
to  forgive  and  was  on  her  way  to  meet 
the  penitent.  Then  Rimbaud  too  de- 
clared that  he  would  leave  him.  No 
one  knows  how  it  happened,  whether  it 
was  jealousy,  anger,  hatred,  love  or 
only  drunkenness,  at  any  rate  the  disas- 
ter followed  on  the  public  street  of 
Brussels.  Verlaine  pursued  Rimbaud 
and  shot  at  him  twice  with  a  revolver, 
wounding  him  once.  The  police  came, 
and  though  Rimbaud  defended  and  ex- 
46 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

cused  Verlaine,  the  latter  was  arrested. 
The  sentence  was  two  years  in  prison, 
and  these  Verlaine  spent  at  Mons. 
The  immediate  result  was  a  divorce, 
upon  which  Madame  Verlaine  insisted 
with  every  possible  emphasis  and  in 
spite  of  Victor  Hugo's  intervention. 

This  conclusion,  however,  was  too 
banal  and  trite  for  so  heroic  a  tragedy. 
The  friendship  persisted.  Verlaine  and 
Rimbaud  corresponded.  Verlaine  sent 
occasional  poems  from  prison  and  told 
Rimbaud  of  his  conversion.  The  latter 
hardly  pleased  Rimbaud,  who  was  at 
that  time  cold  and  indifferent  toward 
everything  except  that  he  was  filled 
with  a  thirst  for  something  unique  and 
infinite  and  looking  forward  to  new  ad- 
ventures. Verlaine  had  hardly  been  re- 
leased before  he  tried  to  convert  Rim- 
baud to  this  religious  life  in  order  to 
link  their  lives  anew.  "  Let  us  love 
each  other  in  Jesus  Christ,"  he  wrote  in 
his  proselyting  ardor  and  with  the  en- 
thusiasm which  in  the  beginning  he  al- 
47 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

ways  felt  for  everything.  Rimbaud 
smiled  mockingly  and  finally  declared 
that  "  Loyola "  should  visit  him  in 
Stuttgart. 

Now  the  moment  arrived  when 
comedy  outdid  the  tragedy  of  the  re- 
union. Verlaine  arrived  at  Stuttgart 
and  attempted  the  conversion  —  unfor- 
tunately in  an  inn,  a  place  little  adapted 
for  proselytes  and  prophets,  for  both 
the  saint  and  the  mocker  still  had  in 
common  their  passion  for  drink.  No 
one  witnessed  the  scene ;  only  the  result 
is  known.  On  the  way  home  both  were 
drunk,  and  a  quarrel  ensued  and  a 
unique  incident  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture followed. 

In  the  flooding  moonlight  by  the 
banks  of  the  Neckar  the  two  greatest 
living  poets  in  France  fell  upon  each 
other  in  wild  rage  with  sticks  and  fists. 
The  struggle  did  not  last  long.  Rim- 
baud, athletic,  like  a  wild  animal,  a  man 
of  passion,  easily  subdued  the  nervous, 
weakly  Verlaine,  stumbling  in  drunk- 
48 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

enness.  A  blow  over  the  head  knocked 
him  down.  Bleeding  and  unconscious, 
he- remained  lying  on  the  bank. 

It  was  the  last  time  they  saw  each 
other.  Verlaine  disappeared  on  the 
next  day.  The  episode  had  come  to  an 
end,  but  nevertheless  several  letters 
passed  back  and  forth.  Then  Rim- 
baud's grandiose  Odyssey  through  the 
entire  world  began.  For  many  years 
his  friends  in  Paris  believed  him  dead, 
and  even  to-day  relatively  little  is 
known  of  his  life  afterward.1 

In  Vienna  he  was  under  arrest  as  a 
vagrant,  in  the  Balkans  he  was  a  mer- 
chant. Then  fulfilling  his  early  proph- 
ecy in  the  Bateau  ivre  he  said  farewell 
to  Europe  and  in  Africa  became  dis- 
coverer, general,  conqueror.  In  these 
unexpected  fields  he  spent  to  the  last 
limits  his  titanic  energy,  which  in 
youthful  crises  had  been  expended  on 

1  A  Biography  and  a  volume  of  Rimbaud's  corre- 
spondence have  recently  been  published  by  his 
brother-in-law,  Pateme  Berrichon.  They  throw  much 
light  upon  his  remarkable  career. 

49 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

the  fragile  and  for  him  too  weakly  ma- 
terial of  language  and  rhyme.  Until 
the  day  of  his  death,  he,  the  only  true 
de$piser  of  literature  of  these  days, 
never  wrote  another  line,  and  endeav- 
ored only  to  give  form  to  his  wild  and 
fantastic  dreams  in  the  material  of  life, 
dying  in  fever  as  feverishly  he  lived. 

For  Verlaine  it  was  an  episode  — 
the  most  important,  it  is  true,  in  a  life 
which  was  torn  to  many  tatters.  After 
his  conversion,  which  will  be  discussed 
more  fully  later,  he  returned  to  Paris 
and  literature,  and  died  in  harness, 
physically  in  1896,  as  artist  much 
earlier. 


50 


THE    PENITENT 

It  is  well  known  that  at  the  moment 
when  he  left  the  prison  at  Mons,  Paul 
Verlaine,  the  prisoner,  entered  the 
ranks  of  the  great  Catholic  poets.  A 
complete  transformation  took  place  in 
his  life.  He  turned  from  the  material 
to  the  spiritual.  The  penitent  mood  of 
his  childhood  days  glimmered  again 
when  he  thought  of  the  Nazarene.  The 
soft  early  yearnings  which  were  forgot- 
ten in  his  years  of  wandering  became 
symbolized  into  a  definite  idea.  Nor  is 
this  surprising  in  one  who  never  could 
understand  his  intellectual  processes, 
but  who  was  moved  entirely  by  the  ebb 
and  flow  of  emotion,  and  who  always 
wavered  unsteadily  in  all  the  crises  of 
life. 

In  general  it  is  almost  a  necessity 
among  poets  that  poetic  feeling  should 
be  transmuted  into  religious  feeling. 
51 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

But  the  creative  poets  of  active  men- 
tality and  intellectuality  build  their  own 
religion,  while  the  sensitive  or  passive 
poets  pour  out  their  flood  of  feeling 
for  God  in  the  form  of  existing  rites 
and  symbols.  Balzac  clearly  shows  this 
relationship  when  he  says  in  The  Thir- 
teen: 

"  Are  not  religion,  love  and  poetry, 
the  threefold  expression  of  the  same 
fact,  the  need  for  expression  which  fills 
every  noble  soul?  These  three  creative 
impulses  rise  up  toward  God,  who  con- 
centrates in  himself  all  earthly  emo- 
tions." 

Religion  is  only  a  certain  form  of 
association  in  which  things  are  placed 
in  relationship  with  each  other.  Simi- 
larly the  sensation  of  evening,  of  the 
cool  pure  air  after  rain,  of  the  whisper- 
ing of  the  winds  and  the  play  of  clouds, 
or  whatever  else  is  caught  up  in  the 
nervous  fever  of  poetic  sensibility, 
hearkens  back  to  the  infinite  after  it 
has  been  permeated  bv  the  poet's  own 
52 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

sorrow  or  joy.  He  feels  that  the  in- 
finite has  a  soul  which  understands  and 
atones  for  all  sorrows,  and  thus  he  con- 
ceives it  as  divinity.  The  poet's  relig- 
ion is  derived  from  the  one  great  faith 
with  which  he  must  be  filled,  which  is 
the  necessity  for  being  understood.  It 
is  only  one  step  further  when  he  finds 
that  his  soul's  outflow  must  lead  some- 
where, and  then  he  gives  a  name,  a  form 
and  an  interpretation  to  what  has  been 
incomprehensible. 

But  a  more  definite  element  in  Paul 
Verlaine  drove  him  into  the  arms  of 
Catholicism.  It  was  his  impulse  to  con- 
fession, which  I  have  tried  to  show  was 
the  most  intensive  element  in  his  per- 
sonality. A  soul  which  lacks  ethical 
authority  for  self-control,  in  its  help- 
lessness must  turn  with  accusation  and 
pleading  toward  others,  toward  some- 
thing outside  of  the  self. 

Cry  and  sigh  are  the  original  forms 
of  all  lyricism,  and  just  as  they  are  a 
sweet  compulsion  to  expel  an  inner 
58 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

overflow  by  utterance,  so  confession  is 
only  deliverance  from  an  inner  pres- 
sure, from  guilt  and  penitence,  from 
mighty  forces,  accordingly,  which  the 
confessor  wishes  to  transmit  to  others. 
It  is  a  need  for  explanation,  a  marvel- 
lous deception,  a  means  to  tame  forces 
by  trust,  a  trust  which  is  not  felt  toward 
one's  self.  Goethe's  much-quoted 
words  of  the  fragments  of  the  "  great 
confession  "  are  still  to  the  point,  no 
matter  how  often  they  have  been  used. 
As  he  wrote  to  rid  his  mind  of  incidents 
which  he  had  experienced,  so  Verlaine 
told  of  himself,  now  to  the  public,  now 
to  the  confessor.  The  fundamental 
process,  however,  is  identical. 

Many  other  things  cooperated. 
There  was  the  great  antithesis  between 
flesh  and  spirit,  between  body  and  soul ; 
contempt  for  the  sensual  and  continual 
fall  into  sin  —  the  immanent  conflict  of 
childish  and  animal  feeling  which 
flooded  forever  wildly  through  Ver- 
laine's  years  of  manhood.  This  also  has 
54 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

been  for  centuries  the  symbol  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  In  it  sensitive  and 
mystical  emotion  found  a  dogmatic 
form,  through  the  fundamental  princi- 
ple of  the  antithesis  between  the  earthly 
and  the  transcendental.  In  the  same 
way  the  consciousness  of  the  value  of 
the  sensual  as  sin  and  of  the  pure  as 
virtue  is  only  a  reflex  of  the  subjective 
impressions  of  pure  souls.  Here  Ver- 
laine  found  a  definite  form  for  the 
warning  which  flickered  unsteadily  in 
him.  By  confession  he  was  able  to  place 
his  sins  into  the  dreamy  hands  of  the 
immaculate  Virgin;  in  her  form  he  was 
at  last  able  worthily  to  give  substance 
to  the  dream-like  shadows  of  the  soft 
unsensual  women,  which  glimmered 
like  stars  over  his  life.  It  was  the  need 
for  quiet  after  storms,  confession  after 
sins. 

Childhood  bells  called  him  back  to 

the  church.    Pale  ancient  memories  led 

him  —  the  pomp  of  the  solemn  great 

processions  which  he  saw  in  Montpel- 

55 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

lier.  The  bon  enfant  awoke  in  him 
again.  The  memory  of  his  own  folded 
hands,  of  his  timid  child's  voice  lisping 
prayers,  and  of  his  sacred  soft  baptis- 
mal name,  Marie,  rose  in  him.  The  dark 
mysticism  and  the  wonderful  blue  half- 
lights  of  Catholic  faith  called  the 
dreamer.  The  same  incense  shadow  of 
vague  violent  emotion  led  the  romantic 
dreamers,  Stolberg,  Schlegel  and  No- 
valis,  from  the  cool,  clear  and  transpar- 
ent air  of  Protestantism  into  a  foreign 
faith.  The  leitmotiv  of  Verlaine's 
poetry  was  his  yearning  and  the  infin- 
itely beautiful  and  persistent  impulse  of 
the  unhappy  toward  childhood  and  the 
magic  of  a  primitively  reverent  life 
close  to  God.  These  wrought  the  mir- 
acle. 

If  trust  were  to  be  put  in  the  corrupt 
man  of  letters  who  wrote  the  Confes- 
sions, it  was  a  true  miracle,  like  that  in 
the  cell  of  Saint  Anthony,  which 
brought  him  into  the  arms  of  the 
Church. 

56 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

In  his  narrow  room,  in  which  he  read 
Shakespeare  and  other  worldly  books, 
hung  a  simple  crucifix,  unnoticed  at 
first.     Of  it  he  wrote: 

"  I  know  not  what  or  Who  suddenly 
raised  me  in  the  night,  threw  me  from 
my  bed  without  even  leaving  me  time 
to  dress,  and  prostrated  me  weeping 
and  sobbing  at  the  feet  of  the  crucifix 
and  before  the  supererogatory  image  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  which  has  evoked 
the  most  strange,  but  in  my  eyes  the 
most  sublime  devotion  of  modern 
times." 

On  the  following  day  he  asked  for 
a  priest  and  confessed  his  sins.  At 
that  hour,  Verlaine,  the  Catholic  poet, 
was  born.  He  was  wonderfully  primi- 
tive, like  the  early  poets  of  the  Church, 
and  his  verses  were  as  full  of  profound 
mystic  poetry  as  those  of  the  saints, 
Augustine  and  Francis  of  Assisi,  and 
those  of  the  German  philosopher  poets, 
Eckart  and  Tauler. 

During  these  two  years  the  neophyte 
57 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

wrote  Sagesse,  a  volume  which  ap- 
peared later  under  the  imprint  of  an 
exclusively  Catholic  publisher.  It  is 
the  deepest  and  greatest  work  of 
French  poetry,  "  the  white  crown  of  his 
work,"  Verhaeren  calls  it  in  his  brilliant 
study  of  Verlaine.  Here  again,  as 
once  in  the  Bonne  Chanson,  the  diver- 
gent forms  of  his  character  unite.  In 
the  unrestrained  solution  of  everything 
personal  in  the  divine,  in  "  the  melting 
of  his  own  heart  in  the  glowing  heart 
of  God,"  impulse  and  yearning  are 
purified.  Eroticism  becomes  spiritual- 
ized into  fervor;  hope,  into  sublime 
enlightenment;  passion,  devouring 
earthly  dross,  takes  the  form  of  mystic 
surrender.  Thus  the  impulsive  in  Ver- 
laine, permeated  by  hours  of  pure  emo- 
tion, obtains  its  wild  power  of  beauty, 
and  trembles  in  the  inexplicable  mys- 
tery and  in  the  stream  of  visionary 
light,  so  that  his  entire  life  now  seems 
illumined. 

In  his  religion  likewise  it  is  the  purely 
58 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

human  element  which  is  so  wonderful. 
Verlaine  does  not  possess  the  seraphic 
mildness  of  Novalis,  nor  the  consump- 
tive, girl-like,  sickly-beautiful  inclina- 
tion of  the  pre-Raphaelites  toward  the 
miraculous  image.  He  is  passionate 
and  vehement.  He  is  masculine  where 
the  others  become  feminine.  Like  a 
timid  girl,  Novalis  dreams  of  Jesus  as 
his  bride.  "  If  I  have  Him  only,  if  He 
only  is  mine,"  he  says  and  his  words 
become  a  chaste  love  song. 

Verlaine,  however,  is  a  reverberating 
echo  of  the  great  seekers  after  God,  of 
the  church  fathers,  of  St.  Augustine 
and  of  the  mystics,  and  he  wrestles  for 
an  almost  physical  love  of  God.  His 
passion  is  often  impious  in  its  earthi- 
ness;   his  yearning,  sacrilege. 

In  his  sonnet  cycle,  Mon  dieu  ma  dit, 
is  a  place  where  the  soul,  wounded  by 
the  lighting  of  divine  love,  cries  out,  un- 
conscious whether  in  joy  or  pain: 

"  Quoi,  moi,  moi  pouvoir  Vous  aimer. 
Etez  vous  fous?  " 
59 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

In  these  impious  words  God  is  hu- 
manized vividly,  and  yet,  by  the  very 
bitterness  of  the  struggle  with  His  all- 
goodness,  the  poet  imbues  Him  with  an 
absolute  perfection. 

Here  Verlaine's  tormented  soul  is 
entirely  cast  out  of  himself,  and 
plunges  in  a  sudden  flood  into  the  in- 
finite. Ecstasy  overcomes  the  feminine 
element  in  him,  just  as  in  his  life  vul- 
gar drunkenness  roused  his  hard, 
coarse  and  brutal  qualities.  For  a 
moment  Verlaine  is  not  only  a  genuine 
and  marvellous,  but  also  a  truly  strong 
and  creative  poet;  no  longer  elegiac 
and  sensitive,  but  creative. 

In  the  reflux  of  enthusiasm  come 
silent  tender  hours  with  songs  in  which 
the  notes  are  muffled.  They  are  the 
poems  he  wrote  in  the  prison  which 
gave  him  quietude  and  shelter,  and  in 
the  silence  of  which  the  soft  voices  of 
his  childhood  rose  again.  Each  one  of 
these  poems  is  noble,  simple,  and  chaste. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  name  the  titles  to 
60 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

hear  the  soft  violin  note  of  their  mild 
sadness  —  "  Un  grand  sommeil  noir," 
"  Le  ciel,  est,  par  dessus  le  toit,,,  "  Je 
ne  sais  pas  pourquoi  mon  esprit  amer," 
"  Le  son  du  cor,"  "  Je  ne  veux  plus 
aimer  que  ma  mere  Marie." 

It  is  truly  " le  coeivr  plus  veuf  que 
tout  les  veuves/'  that  speaks  in  them. 

When  the  "  guote  suendaere  "  again 
went  out  into  life  which  he  had  never 
been  able  to  master,  and  the  wild  rest- 
lessness and  torment  began  which  tore 
his  heart  into  tatters,  nothing  remained 
of  the  two  years  in  prison  except  his 
pious  faith  and  a  sorrowful  memory. 
The  four  walls  which  had  enclosed  him 
also  had  protected  him.  "  He  was  truly 
himself  only  in  the  hospital  and  in 
prison,"  says  Huysmans. 

Poor  Lelian's  longing  plaint  is  for 
this  silence.  "  Ah  truly,  I  regret  the 
two  years  in  the  tower."  His  song 
says  "  Formerly  I  dwelt  in  the  best  of 
castles."  His  yearning  for  the  elemen- 
tal, "  far  from  a  curbed  age,"  never  left 
61 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

him  since  those  hours,  and  least  of  all 
in  Paris,  the  city  of  his  crowning  fame 
as  a  poet.  Faith  he  soon  lost,  hut  never 
the  yearning  for  faith. 

In  addition  Verlaine  wrote  a  long 
series  of  Catholic  poems.  As  will  be 
shown  later,  he  outraged  his  unique 
qualities  and  thus  destroyed  them.  The 
unconscious  portion,  the  wonderful 
fragrance  of  his  early  religious  poems, 
which  were  entirely  emotional,  soon  dis- 
sipated. He  constructed  an  infinite 
number  of  pious  verses,  verses  for 
saints'  days,  religious  emblems,  and 
compiled  volumes  of  poetry  for  Catho- 
lic publishers.  At  the  same  time  he 
edited  pornographica  and  all  manner 
of  indecencies.  His  conversion  had 
created  a  sensation.  He  had  been 
thrust  into  a  role  and  felt  it  his  duty 
to  play  the  part  and  to  retain  the  cos- 
tume. This  was  the  reason  for  the  an- 
tithesis. I  do  not  believe  the  faith  of 
his  later  years  to  have  been  genuine. 
He  has  called  himself  "  the  ruin  of  a 
62 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

still  Christian  philosopher  already 
pagan,"  and  in  his  obscene  books  turned 
the  rites  of  Catholic  faith,  which  he 
elsewhere  glorified,  into  phallic  and 
other  sexual  symbols. 

He  was  unable  to  escape  the  reali- 
zation of  the  comedy  of  this  situation. 
In  his  autobiography,  Hommes  d'au- 
jourd'hui,  he  attempted  a  very  ingen- 
ious but  exceedingly  unsatisfactory 
justification.  "  His  work,"  he  explains, 
speaking  of  poor  Lelian,  "  from  1880 
took  on  two  very  sharply  defined  direc- 
tions, and  the  prospectuses  of  his  future 
books  indicated  that  he  had  made  up 
his  mind  to  continue  this  system  and  to 
publish,  if  not  simultaneously,  at  least 
in  parallel,  works  absolutely  different 
in  idea  —  to  be  more  exact,  books  in 
which  Catholicism  unfolds  its  logic  and 
its  lures,  its  blandishments  and  its  ter- 
rors; and  others  purely  modern,  sen- 
sual with  a  distressing  good  humor  and 
full  of  the  pride  of  life." 

Can  this  be  the  program  of  the  "  un- 
63 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

conscious?  "  A  few  lines  further  on  he 
has  given  another  explanation.  "  I  be- 
lieve, and  I  am  a  good  Christian  at  this 
moment;  I  believe,  and  I  am  a  bad 
Christian  the  instant  after.  The  re- 
membrance of  hope,  the  evocation  of  a 
sin,  delight  me  with  or  without  re- 
morse." This  is  the  truth.  Verlaine 
was  a  man  of  moods,  he  was  always 
only  the  creature  of  the  moment. 
After  a  few  seconds  the  movement  of 
his  will  contracted  limply  and  momen- 
tary desires  overflooded  his  conscious- 
ness of  personality.  His  faith  may 
have  been  as  capricious  and  restless,  as 
each  one  of  his  tendencies  of  passion. 
Great  poems,  however,  in  the  sense  of 
great  in  extent,  are  not  conceived  in  a 
moment.  Moods  spread  like  a  fine  mist 
over  the  poet's  hours,  they  permeate 
them  and  fill  them  through  and  through 
for  a  long  time  before  a  poem  takes 
form. 

Verlaine,  the  man  of  letters  and  poet 
according    to    program,    is    a    hateful 
64 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

shadow  limping  behind  his  great  works. 
Consciously  and  with  feverish  eager- 
ness and  a  productivity  forced  by  need, 
he  rhymed  in  what  he  thought  his 
unique  manner.  The  poor  old  man 
whom  interviewers  sought  in  the  hospi- 
tal was  no  longer  the  poet,  Paul  Ver- 
laine. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  how  long  the 
flame  of  personal  faith  still  glowed  in 
him.  Probably  it  was  as  little  extin- 
guished as  his  soft  dream  of  childhood. 
In  the  dusk  of  his  last  years  it  often 
struggled  upward  with  tears,  as  a  sym- 
bol of  sorrow  over  his  broken  life. 

As  all  his  thought  began  to  tend 
toward  senile  mistiness,  his  emotions 
also  slowly  deteriorated  in  indifference 
and  drunkenness.  It  was  not  his  com- 
panions in  his  cups  who  understood  him 
best,  but  the  poets  who  saw  his  life  in 
the  illuminating  perspective  of  dis- 
tance. 

In  a  short  story,  Gestas,  Anatole 
France  has  marvellously  described  in 
65 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

his  insistent,  quiet,  dignified  fashion  the 
mingling  of  purity  and  depravity  in 
this  life  of  curious  piety.  It  is  merely 
an  anecdote.  Stumbling,  a  drunkard 
enters  church  in  the  early  morn  to  con- 
fess his  sins.  The  priest  has  not  yet 
arrived.  The  drunkard  begins  to  grow 
noisy,  beats  the  praver  desks;  he  ra^res 
and  weeps,  he  has  so  endlessly  many 
sins  to  confess,  he  wants  only  a  little 
priest,  a  very,  very  little  one. 

In  these  few  pages  everything  is 
compressed,  "  the  prodigal  child  with 
the  vestures  of  a  satyr."  All  the  traits 
of  Verlaine  are  here,  the  accusing  one 
of  the  penitent  which  he  never  lost,  the 
angry  one  of  the  drunkard,  the  yearn- 
ing tenderness  of  the  poet,  all  the  child- 
ishly wise,  and  yet  in  its  simplicity  so 
marvellously  wonderful,  faith  of  the 
good  sinner. 


66 


LEGENDS  AND  LITERATURE 

One  hesitates  to  relate  the  last  years 
of  this  curious  life.  From  the  moment 
that  Verlaine  returned  to  Paris  the 
tragedy  lacks  aesthetic  significance. 
There  are  no  longer  sudden  descents 
and  elevations,  but  his  life  is  slowly 
stifled  in  camaraderie,  lingering  disease 
and  depravity.  His  poetic  force  crum- 
bles away,  his  uniqueness  becomes  ex- 
tinguished. It  is  no  longer  a  foaming 
wave  crest  that  carries  him  away,  but 
dirty  little  waves. 

When  he  came  to  Paris,  he  had  been 
forgotten.  His  books  were  lying  un- 
sold with  the  publishers;  the  majority 
of  his  friends  avoided  him,  evidently 
because  their  frock  coat  of  the  Academy 
made  recognition  difficult,  until  sud- 
denly the  younger  generation  began  to 
noise  about  his  name;  and  now  more 
people  quarrel  over  starting  this  move- 
67 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

ment  than  there  were  cities  to  claim 
Homer's  cradle. 

It  was  a  period  of  development. 
French  lyric  poetry  was  passing 
through  a  revolutionary  crisis.  For  the 
first  time  the  marble  image  of  "  beaute 
impassible"  trembled  in  the  hands  of 
the  poets.  But  not  one  of  them  was  a 
strong  enough  artist  to  create  a  new 
ideal.  At  this  moment  the  younger 
men  began  to  remember  Verlaine.  His 
Bohemian  life,  the  soft,  fluctuating 
dreamy  manner  of  his  art,  the  frenzy  of 
his  life,  his  recklessness,  loyalty  and  ele- 
mentalness  were  a  marvellous  antithe- 
sis to  the  well-bred  "  impassibilite  **  of 
the  Academy.  His  name  was  used  as 
a  battering-ram  against  the  Parnas- 
sians. In  kindly  fashion,  without 
choice,  Verlaine,  the  old  man,  who  was 
beginning  to  feel  chill,  accepted  the  late 
enthusiasm  and  veneration. 

Literature  alone  is  not  yet  sufficient 
to  create  fame  in  France.  It  was  only 
when  the  great  journals  began  to  take 
68 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

an  interest  in  his  life  that  he  became 
popular.  And  at  that  time  a  mass  of 
paltry  legends  began  to  gather  around 
his  name.  He  became  the  "  naive  child 
of  modern  culture,"  the  "  Bohemian," 
the  "  Unconscious,"  the  "  New  Fran- 
cois Villon,"  and  even  to-day  these 
stereotyped  phrases  are  industriously 
repeated. 

Indeed  his  life  was  strange.  In  hos- 
pitals the  poet  sought  shelter.  With 
a  white  cloth  wound  like  a  turban 
around  his  bald,  Socrates-like  head,  he 
was  always  surrounded  by  contempo- 
rary literature,  which  strove  to  rise  with 
the  aid  of  his  name.  He  received  inter- 
viewers, and  wrote  his  poems  on  pre- 
scription blanks  and  smeary  tatters. 
When  he  was  well,  he  wandered  from 
cafe  to  cafe,  holding  forth  and  gesticu- 
lating, getting  drunk,  and  associating 
with  lewd  women,  always  with  a  certain 
ostentation  whenever  he  noticed  that 
the  public  was  watching  him.  As  a 
senile  Silenus,  he  presided  over  the  most 
69 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

remarkable  bacchanalia.  Like  a  second 
Victor  Hugo,  he  patronized  the 
younger  men  with  benevolent  gesture. 
A  forced  merriness  seemed  in  those 
days  to  tremble  electrically  through  his 
nerves.  Yet  never  before  had  his  life 
been  filled  with  deeper  tragedy  and 
yearning,  and  there  were  many  hours 
when  he  himself  felt  this  keenly. 
Crushed  and  torn  by  the  teeth  of  life, 
he,  like  all  Bohemians,  at  last  desired 
only  peace.  Never  was  the  sweet 
dream  of  his  childhood  days  more 
poignant  than  in  just  this  period  of  dis- 
solute play-acting  and  vain  exhibition- 
ism. 

Taine  has  very  accurately  shown  that 
creative  art  consists  in  the  automatiza- 
tion of  the  creative  individuality,  in 
overhearing  and  imitating  inherent 
qualities,  and  in  objectifying  the  per- 
sonal elements.  This  process  too  be- 
came operative  in  Verlaine's  life,  more 
markedly  because  in  him  life  and  per- 
sonality were  immanent  interaction. 
70 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

He  caricatured  himself  and  re-drew 
the  delicate  lines  of  his  soul  with  crude 
pencil.  Consciously  he  tried  to  make 
the  unconscious  elements  take  plastic 
form  again  by  way  of  reflection.  He 
was  no  longer  elemental,  but  he  strove 
hard  to  be.  He  prayed  to  God  "  to 
give  me  all  simplicity,"  because  he 
knew  it  was  expected  of  him.  Since  he 
was  counted  among  the  Catholic  poets, 
he  tried  again  to  pass  through  the 
storm  of  sacred  emotion.  The  effort 
resulted  in  pompous,  well-constructed 
religious  poems,  plump  like  botched 
Roman  churches. 

He  attempted  to  show  the  uncon- 
scious in  himself  by  striving  to  explain 
the  creative  impulse  and  placing  mir- 
rors behind  his  juggler's  tricks.  The 
wonderful  gesture  of  surrender  which 
destiny  and  sorrow  had  taught  him,  he 
learned  by  heart  like  an  actor  who  re- 
produces a  gesture  mechanically  at 
the  seventy  succeeding  performances, 
though  he  is  truly  an  artist  only  at  the 
71 


PA  UL    VERLAINE 

moment  when  he  first  discovers  and  un- 
derstands its  significance  in  studying 
the  part.  Thus  Verlaine  carefully  re- 
constructed all  the  characteristics  which 
the  journals  declared  were  his  own. 
Coquettishly  he  exhibited  the  "  poor 
Lelian  "  and  the  t{  bon  enfant "  — 
mere  costumes  of  a  poetical  fire  that 
had  long  died  out.  His  manner  became 
more  and  more  childlike ;  he  was  trying 
to  enter  entirely  into  the  role  of 
"guileless  fool"  while  his  sharp  but 
unlogical  intelligence  never  gave  way. 

The  poet  retired  further  and  further 
into  him.  The  more  he  rhymed  (and  in 
the  last  years  with  morbid  frequency), 
the  fewer  poems  were  produced.  Now 
and  then  one  came,  when  pose  and  im- 
pulse joined  in  minutes  of  sad  (or 
drunken)  melancholy,  and  when  the 
mysterious  fluid  of  the  unconscious  and 
great  indefinite  emotions  made  him 
silent,  simple  and  timid. 

Otherwise  he  alternately  turned 
erotic  incidents  and  adventures  in  al- 
72 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

coves  into  rhyme,  and  wrote  literary 
mockeries  and  parodies  of  Paul  Ver- 
laine,  and  for  purposes  of  contrast, 
verses  in  praise  of  Catholic  saint  days. 
Every  artistic  pride  was  soon  forgotten 
in  the  need  for  money.  He  sold  his 
poems  at  one  hundred  sous  apiece  to  his 
publisher  Vanier,  who  cruelly  printed 
them  often  against  the  active  protest 
of  the  poet ;  recently  again  a  volume  of 
"  Posthumous  Works,"  which  easily 
may  be  denominated  as  one  of  the  most 
disagreeable  and  worst  books  pub- 
lished in  France.  This  portion  of  the 
tragedy  of  his  life  no  one  has  as  yet 
fully  told. 

During  his  last  years  he  wrote  two 
books  which  must  not  be  ignored  even 
though  they  do  not  fit  in  the  customary 
picture  of  the  bon  enfant.  These  were 
Femmes  and  Hombre$.  They  could 
not  appear  publicly  but  were  sold  in 
five  hundred  numbered  copies  each.  In 
them  Verlaine  broke  abruptly  with  the 
tradition  of  agreeable  nastiness  of  a 
73 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

Grecourt,  in  order  to  produce  works  of 
an  unheard-of  subjective  shamelessness. 
In  form  the  poems  are  smooth  and  in 
structure  they  are  clever,  but  their  sub- 
ject matter  and  the  poet's  self -revela- 
tion is  such  as  to  place  these  volumes 
among  the  most  unhappy  that  have 
ever  been  produced.  They  are  naked 
and  obscene. 

From  an  sesthetic  point  of  view  this 
publication,  even  if  it  was  clandestine 
was  without  excuse,  and  it  was  the  deep- 
est descent  of  the  poet.  The  effect  of 
this  depravity  of  an  old  man  writing 
down  with  unsteady  hand  vices  and 
nakednesses  on  prescription  blanks  for 
the  sake  of  a  few  francs  with  which  to 
buy  an  absinthe,  is  tragic.  The  exist- 
ence and  the  spread  of  these  books 
must  destroy  absolutely  the  legend  of 
the  "  guileless  fool."  This  is  the  only 
value  which  can  be  attributed  to  them. 

The  carnival  comedy  took  place  be- 
fore Ash  Wednesday.  When  Leconte 
de  Lisle  died,  the  younger  generation 
74 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

advertised  and  arranged  for  the  choice 
of  the  king  of  poets,  never  realizing  to 
what  extent  they  were  guilty  in  bring- 
ing about  the  artistic  degeneration  of 
the  chosen  poet.  The  faun-like,  mock- 
ingly sagacious  head  of  Paul  Verlaine, 
who  was  ill  and  growing  old,  received^ 
the  crown.  Poor  Lelian  became  "  king 
of  the  poets,"  a  mark  of  great  affection 
on  the  part  of  the  younger  men,  but 
only  a  title  after  all,  which  was  unable 
to  give  Paul  Verlaine  the  necessary 
dignity  and  strength  of  personality.' 
After  Verlaine,  Stephane  Mallarme  in- 
herited the  imaginary  crown,  and  after 
him  it  was  worn  in  obscurity  by  Leon 
Dierx,1  a  not  very  distinguished,  but 
agreeable  and  dignified  poet  of  the 
former  Parnassus.  The  coronation  was 
only  a  pose  and  voluntary  choice,  and 
would  hardly  be  worth  considering  were 
it  not  for  the  fact  that  this  admiration 
for  Verlaine's  work  indicated  an  under- 

1  Leon  Dierx  died  in  1912  at  the  age  of  74,  and  Paul 
Fort,  the  author  of  the  famous  Ballades  Franpaises, 
was  chosen  as  M  king  of  the  poets  "  to  succeed  him. 

75 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

lying  tendency  in  modern  French  po- 
etry. 

To  the  younger  generation  Verlaine 
represented  not  only  a  great  poet,  but 
to  them  he  was  also  the  regenerator  of 
French  lyric  poetry.  The  legend  that 
Verlaine  consciously  changed  poetic 
valuations  is  entirely  due  to  a  single 
poem,  the  "  Art  Poetique."  It  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  quote  it,  because  on 
the  one  hand  it  is  characteristic  of 
Verlaine's  instinct  concerning  his  own 
work,  and  because  on  the  other  hand  it 
is  the  basis  of  all  the  formulas  which 
became  dogmas  among  the  verse  jug- 
glers. (An  English  translation  of  this 
poem  is  given  on  page  90.) 

"  De  la  musique  avant  toute  chose, 
Et  pour  cela  prefere  l'lmpair 
Plus  vague  et  plus  soluble  dans  Fair, 
Sans  rien  en  lui,  qui  pese  ou  qui  pose. 

M  II  faut  aussi  que  tu  n'ailles  point 
Choisir  tes  mots  sans  quelque  meprise: 
Rien  de  plus  cher  que  la  chanson  grise 
Ou  Tlndecis  au  Precis  se  joint. 
76 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

"  C'est   des  beaux  yeaux   derriere  les 

voiles, 
C'est  le  grand  jour  tremblant  de  midi, 
C'est,  par  un  ciel  d'automne  attiedi, 
Le  bleu  fouillis  des  claires  etoiles! 

"  Car  nous  voulons  la  Nuance  encore, 
Pas  la  Couleur,  rien  que  la  nuance! 
Oh,  la  nuance  seule  fiance 
Le  reve  au  reve  et  la  flute  au  cor! 

"  Fuis  du  plus  loin  la  Pointe  assassine, 
L'Esprit  cruel  et  le  Rire  impur, 
Qui  font  pleurer  les  yeux  d'Azur 
Et  tout  cet  ail  de  basse  cuisine! 

"  Prends   l'eloquence   et   tords-lui   son 

cou! 
Tu  f  eras  bien,  en  train  d'energie, 
De  rendre  un  peu  la  Rime  assagie, 
Si  Ton  n'y  veille,  elle  ira  jusqu'ou? 

"  Oh!  qui  dira  les  torts  de  la  Rime? 
Quel  enfant  sourd  ou  quel  negre  f ou 
Nous  a  forge  ce  bijou  d'un  sou 
Qui  sonne  creux  et  faux  sous  la  lime? 

"  De  la  musique  encore  et  tou jours! 
Que  ton  vers  soit  la  chose  envolee 
Qu'on  sent  qui  fuit  dune  ame  en  allee 
Vers  d'autres  cieux  a  d'autres  amours. 

77 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

"  Que  ton  vers  soit  la  bonne  aventure 
Sparse  au  vent  crispe  du  matin 
Qui  va  fleurant  la  menthe  et  le  thym  . .  . 
Et  tout  le  reste  est  litterature." 

Without  question  certain  words  in 
these  lines,  somewhat  veiled  by  the 
poetic  form  of  expression,  harmonize 
with  the  fundamental  conceptions  of 
modern  impressionistic  lyric  poetry. 
France  never  was  the  land  of  pure 
emotional  poetry.  There  is  too  much 
sense  of  the  formal,  too  much  of  a  keen- 
sighted  almost  mathematical  type  of 
intellect  mingled  with  a  gallant  pleas- 
ure in  pointedness  among  the  French, 
and  these  make  them  turn  into  logic 
the  elements  of  mysticism  which  must 
be  in  every  poem,  whether  in  its  emo- 
tional content  or  its  vague  form  of  ex- 
pression. Goethe  has  proclaimed  the 
incommensurable  as  the  material  of  all 
poetry,  but  among  the  French  the  tend- 
ency to  crystallize  it  in  the  solution  of 
their  positivist  habit  of  thought  is  ever 
imperceptibly  betrayed.  The  feeling 
78 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

for  the  line  and  style  shows  through. 
For  them  poetry  is  architecture;  intui- 
tion, their  intellectual  formula;  the 
marble  of  conceptions  is  their  material, 
and  rhyme  the  mortar. 

Clarity  and  orderly  arrangement  are 
the  preliminary  conditions  for  Victor 
Hugo,  for  the  Parnassians  and  even 
for  Baudelaire,  even  though  the  latter, 
by  his  visionary  form  and  the  opiate  of 
his  dark  words,  created  for  the  first  time 
solemn,  that  is  to  say  poetical,  impres- 
sions instead  of  those  of  pomp  alone. 
It  seems  therefore  an  error  to  look  for 
the  revolutionary  tendency  and  literary 
importance  of  a  Verlaine  in  the  loose- 
ness of  his  verse  structure  and  more 
careless  (or  intentionally  careless)  use 
of  rhyme.  His  merit  is  rather  that  he 
was  able  to  illume  chaos,  darkness,  and 
presentiments  by  the  very  indefinite- 
ness  and  the  vague  music  of  his  soul. 
This  enabled  him  to  endue  his  poems 
with  their  mystical  trembling  melody, 
not  by  abstracting  his  inner  music  in 
79 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

definite  melodies,  but  by  fixing  it  in 
assonance,  rhymes  and  rhythmic  waves. . 
Unconsciously  he  recognized  that 
lyric  art  is  the  most  immaterial  of  all 
and  is  most  nearly  related  to  music. 
Its  aerial  trembling  and  immateriality 
may  meet  the  soul  in  waves  of  glowing 
fire,  but  intellectually  it  is  unseizable. 
He  tried  to  preserve  this  musical  ele- 
ment by  means  of  harmony  and  asso- 
nance, but  it  was  not  he  himself  so 
much  as  the  unconscious  gift  of  poetry 
that  played  mysteriously  in  him  and 
made  him  find  the  fundamental  secret 
of  lyric  effects.  Smile  Verhaeren,  the 
only  other  French  poet  who  is  a  more 
vehement  and  constructive  character, 
sought  and  found  the  musical  element 
of  lyric  poetry  by  the  only  other  way, 
that  is,  in  verbal  rhythm  or  consonantal 
music.  Thus  to  volatilize  the  material 
simultaneously  in  the  form  and  to  join 
the  technical  with  the  intuitive  elements 
is  the  highest  quality  of  lyric  poetry. 
It  makes  it  immediate,  organic,  that  is 
80 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

to  say,  its  spiritual  elements  permeate 
the  material  in  immanent  reaction,  and 
thus  the  mystery  of  life  is  renewed  in 
individual  artifacts.  Self -evidently  this 
intuitive  recognition  is  no  discovery. 
It  has  been  present  in  the  great  lyric 
poets  of  all  time,  a  mystery  like  that 
of  sexual  reproduction,  which  awakens 
only  at  the  age  of  ripeness.  It  was  new 
in  France  only  because,  besides  Villon, 
Verlaine  was  the  first  lyric  genius  of 
the  French. 

The  mystery  of  the  German  folk- 
song with  its  simple,  sweetly  mysterious 
essence  became  realized  in  him,  perhaps 
because  there  was  an  undercurrent  of 
national  relationship.  Because  of  the 
weakness,  submissiveness  and  child-like 
confusion  of  his  emotionality,  the  vibra- 
tions became  tonality,  sound  and,  be- 
cause he  was  a  poet,  music,  instead  of 
intellectual  structures. 

Such  art  must  be  more  effective  as 
contrasted  with  all  intellectualism  be- 
cause it  springs  from  deeper  sources, 
81 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

just  as  simple  weeping  is  more  elo- 
quent than  passionate  wailing  aloud. 
Surely  it  also  contains  an  artificial  ele- 
ment, not  artistry,  but  magic  art,  or  the 
"  alchemy  of  the  word "  which  Rim- 
baud believed,  to  have  discovered,  a  re- 
lationship between  colors,  vowels  and 
sounds  depending  on  idiosyncracy.  It 
is  a  secret  touching  of  the  ultimate 
roots  of  different  stems.  It  is  always 
necessary  to  assume  an  inter-relation 
between  lyricism  and  the  lawless,  enig- 
matic and  magic  elements  of  the  human 
soul  and  to  associate  vague  threshold 
emotions  with  soft  music. 

Verlaine's  poetry  during  his  creative 
period  possesses  this  vagueness,  which 
is  like  a  voice  in  the  dark  or  music  of 
the  soul.  It  also  has  the  lack  of  co- 
herence which  emotions  must  have  when 
they  sweep  in  halting  pain  through  the 
body.  This  element  must  remain  in- 
comprehensible to  commercially  sharp 
intelligences  of  the  type  of  Max  Nor- 
dau,  who  try  in  a  way  to  subtract  the 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

net  value  of  purely  intellectual  ele- 
ments and  "  contents  "  which  could  be 
reduced  to  prose  from  the  gross  value 
of  poems.  Lyricism  is  magic  and  the 
precious  possession  of  a  spiritual  com- 
munion which  finds  its  deepest  enjoy- 
ment in  just  these  almost  impalpable 
elements. 

To  limit  the  most  important  element 
of  Verlaine's  significance  to  his  neglect 
of  rhyme  is  showing  poor  judgment. 
In  the  first  place  it  is  unimportant  and 
secondly  incorrect,  for  he  never  wrote 
a  poem  without  rhyme,  except  in  the 
later  unworthy  years,  when  now  and 
then  he  substituted  assonances.  In  ad- 
dition he  has  himself  protested  in 
UHommes  d'Aujourd'hui: 

"  In  the  past  and  at  present  too  I 
am  honored  by  having  my  name  min- 
gled with  these  disputes,  and  I  pass  for 
a  bitter  adversary  of  rhyme  because  of 
a  selection  published  in  a  recent  collec- 
tion. —  Besides  absolute  liberty  is  my 
device  if  it  were  necessary  for  me  to 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

have  one  —  and  I  find  good  everything 
which  is  good  in  despite  and  notwith- 
standing rules." 

To  many  it  was  insufficient  to  cele- 
brate Verlaine  as  one  of  the  marvels  of 
a  nation,  a  truly  elemental  human  be- 
ing whose  soul  uttered  the  finest  and 
most  tender  lyric  moods  and  who,  as  if 
awakened  out  of  bell-like  and  clear 
dreams,  produced  true  and  melodic 
poetry  out  of  the  darkness  of  his  life. 
His  admirers  have  also  praised  him  as 
a  prose  writer.  But  the  prose-writer 
must  be  an  intellectual  creator,  and 
know  how  to  master  form.  This  Ver- 
laine was  unable  to  do.  He  never 
really  understood  the  world,  and  knew 
only  how  to  tell  of  himself,  and  accord- 
ingly his  novelettes  are  for  the  most 
part  concealed  autobiographies.  They 
have  brilliant  portions  of  characteriza- 
tion. His  intellect,  which  is  paradox- 
ical, self-willed,  lyrical,  and  abrupt, 
flashes  up  and  then  crumbles. 

His  Confessions,  which  have  been 
84 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

highly  praised,  remind  one  of  Rous- 
seau's all  too  confidential  and  hypo- 
critical confessions.  They  are  only 
documents  of  personal  sharp-sighted- 
ness,  unfortunately  much  over-clouded 
by  literary  pose.  He  also  tried  the 
theatre.  His  comedy,  Les  Uns  et  les 
Autres,  has  Watteau-like  style  and 
Pierrot  elegances,  as  well  as  flexibility, 
but  is  of  no  importance.  Another  play, 
Louis  XVI,  remained  a  fragment.  All 
Verlaine's  literary  productions,  like 
biographies,  introductions,  etc.,  give 
a  painful  impression  because  they  are 
forced  and  have  sprung  from  evil 
camaraderie. 

He  has  also  been  called  a  great 
draftsman.  It  is  true  that  an  excellent 
and  characteristic  skill  in  the  figures 
and  scribblings  which  he  sprinkled 
throughout  his  letters  cannot  be  gain- 
said. There  is  even  a  pathetic  element 
in  their  self-confessed  technical  imper- 
fections. The  caricatures  are  playful, 
without  malicious  or  serious  intent, 
85 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

jotted  down  with  childish  self-satisfac- 
tion, but,  of  course,  they  need  not  be 
taken  seriously.  They  are  little  mar- 
ginalia to  his  life,  and  addenda  to  the 
numerous  sharp  and  bright  sketches 
with  which  his  intimate  friend  and  ar- 
tistic Eckermann,  F.  A.  Cazals,  has 
fixed  him  for  posterity.  They  show 
Verlaine  in  all  his  moods  —  in  his  bon- 
homie, despair,  grief,  "  gaminerie/'  sex- 
uality, disease,  even  to  the  last  sketches 
which  show  him  in  death.  They  form 
a  gallery  of  his  life  from  childhood  to 
childhood  along  the  dark  way  of  his 
destiny.  And  as  in  his  poetry,  not- 
withstanding all  the  exuberant  pas- 
sages, the  final  impression  is  a  wailing 
note  of  sadness  —  the  stroke  of  melan- 
choly's bow. 


86 


POSTLUDE 

The  only  thing  which  now  remains  is 
to  ascertain  whether  Paul  Verlaine's 
life-work,  beginning  in  Metz  and  end- 
ing in  a  small  lodging-house  room  in 
Paris  on  a  January  day  in  1896,  con- 
tains the  elements  which  we  would  call 
"  lasting  "  because  we  are  afraid  of  the 
proud  and  resounding  word  "  eternal." 
The  significance  of  great  poets  passes 
the  boundaries  of  literature  and  ignores 
what  is  known  as  "  influences "  and 
"  artistic  atmosphere."  The  eternal 
element  of  great  works  of  poetry 
reaches  back  toward  eternity.  For 
humanity  poetry  is  infinity  which  it 
joins  with  the  ether,  and  the  great  poets 
are  those  who  were  able  to  help  in 
elaborating  the  wonderful  bond  which 
stretches  from  the  distant  darkness  to 
the  red  of  the  new  dawn. 
87 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

It  does  not  diminish  Verlaine's  stat- 
ure if  we  do  not  count  him  among  the 
heroes  of  life.  He  was  an  isolated  phe- 
nomena, too  significant  to  be  typical 
and  too  weak  to  become  eternal.  There 
was  beauty  in  his  pure  humanness,  but 
not  of  the  kind  which  remains  perma- 
nent. He  has  given  nothing  which  was 
not  already  in  us.  He  was  a  fleeting 
stream  of  life  passing  by;  he  was  the 
sublime  echo  of  the  mysterious  music 
which  rises  within  us  on  every  contact 
of  things,  like  the  ring  of  glasses  on  a 
cupboard  under  every  footstep  and  im- 
pact. 

His  effect  is  deep,  but  yet  on  that 
account  not  great.  To  have  become 
great  it  would  have  been  necessary  for 
him  to  conquer  the  destiny  which  he 
could  not  master  and  to  liberate  his  will 
from  the  thousand  little  vices  and  pas- 
sions which  enwrapped  it.  He  is  one  of 
the  writers  who  could  be  spared,  whom 
nevertheless  no  one  would  do  without. 
He  is  a  marvel,  beautiful  and  unneces- 
88 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

sary,  like  a  rare  flower  which  gives 
sweetness  and  wonderful  peace  to  the 
senses,  but  which  does  not  make  us 
noble,  strong,  brave  and  humble. 

He  was,  and  herein  lies  his  greatness 
and  power,  the  symbol  of  pure  human- 
ity, splendid  creative  force  in  the  weak 
vessel  of  his  personality.  He  was  a 
poet  who  in  his  works  became  one  with 
the  poetry  of  life,  the  sounds  of  the 
forest,  the  kiss  of  the  wind,  the  rustling 
of  the  reeds  and  the  voice  of  the  dusk 
of  evening.  Humanly  he  was  like  us 
who  love  him.  He  was  one  of  those 
who,  no  matter  how  great  a  chaos  they 
have  made  of  their  own  life,  are  yet 
inappeasable,  and  drink  the  stranger's 
pain  and  the  stranger's  bliss  in  the  pre- 
cious cup  of  glorious  poetry.  They 
manifold  their  being  and  their  emotions 
because  of  a  blind  and  uncreative  yearn- 
ing for  the  universal  and  infinity. 


89 


ART   POETIQUE 

No  laws  should  rule  by  force  or  guile, 
But  let  your  verse  go  singing  soft, 
And  in  the  solvent  air  aloft 
Find  music,  music  all  the  while. 

Nor  be  too  diffident  in  phrase, 
But  let  your  song  grow  drunk  with  wine 
Where  mystic  unions  vaguely  shine 
In  luminous  and  errant  ways. 

Like  veiled  eyes  your  song  should  be, 
Like  noondays  trembling  in  the  sun, 
Like  autumn  dusks  when  days  are  done 
And  stars  and  sky  join  secretly. 

Not  vivid  colors  should  adorn, 
But  shades  alone  when  dream  to  dream 
Is  wed,  and  tender  shadows  gleam 
Like  flute  notes  mingled  with  the  horn. 

The  "  point  "  which  slays  and  cruel  wit, 
And  smile  impure  you  should  despise, 
For  like  base  garlic  they  arise 
To  spoil  the  poem  exquisite. 
90 


PAUL    VERLAINE 

Take  eloquence  and  twist  its  neck! 
And  sophist  rhyming  which  would  lead 
You  headlong  into  sing-song  speed 
'Tis  well  for  you  to  hold  in  check. 

Oh,  who  shall  tell  of  evil  rhyme ! 
A  trinket  coin  with  hollow  ring, 
A  barbarous  or  childish  thing 
Passed  downward  idly  to  our  time. 

Music,  music,  evermore, 

The  burden  of  your  song  should  be, 

Inherent  like  the  melody 

Of  souls  a-wing  to  distant  shore; 

Or  like  the  brave  emprise  and  pure 
Of  morning  breezes  which  imbue 
The  thyme  and  mint  with  honey  dew  — 
The  rest  belongs  to  literature. 


91 


'   / 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

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6Jan'64DY  5 


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(C8481sl0)476B 


OCT  4 -1966  7  6 

General  Library 

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Berkeley 

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